The election of President and Vice President of the United States is, formally, an indirect

election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty states
or Washington, D.C. cast ballots for members of the U.S. Electoral College, known as electors.
These electors then in turn cast direct votes, known as electoral votes, in their respective state
capitals for President and Vice President. Each of the states casts as many electoral votes as the
total number of Senators and House Representatives in Congress, while Washington, D.C. has
three votes. Once chosen, the electors can technically vote for anyone, but in modern times
with rare exceptions like an unpledged elector or faithless elector almost all electors are
pledged to vote for a particular presidential candidate (and thus the results of the election can
generally be determined based on the state-by-state popular vote). The electoral votes are then
certified by Congress, who is the final judge of electors. The candidate who receives an absolute
majority of electoral votes for President or Vice President is then elected to that office. If no
candidate receives an absolute majority for President, the House of Representatives chooses the
President; if no candidate receives a majority for Vice President, then the Senate chooses the
Vice President.
These presidential elections occur quadrennially. Registered voters cast their ballots on Election
Day, which since 1845 has been the Tuesday after the first Monday in November,[1][2][3]
coinciding with the general elections of various other federal, state, and local races. Election Day
for the next U.S. presidential election, the 58th quadrennial U.S. Presidential Election[4] is
scheduled for November 8, 2016. The electors are then scheduled to formally cast their electoral
votes at a date determined by their respective state capital between Election Day and late
December. Congress will then certify the results in early January 2017, and the next presidential
term officially begins on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017.
The Electoral College and its procedure is established in the U.S. Constitution by Article II,
Section 1, Clauses 2 and 4; and the Twelfth Amendment (which replaced Clause 3 after it was
ratified in 1804). Under Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, the manner for choosing electors is
determined by each state legislature, not directly by the federal government. Originally, many
state legislatures selected their electors directly instead of using any form of popular vote, but the
political parties in the various states currently conduct their own separate elections to help
choose their slate of electors. The Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, then granted
electoral votes to Washington, D.C.
The nomination process, consisting of the primary elections and caucuses and the nominating
conventions, was never specified in the Constitution, and was instead developed over time by the
states and the political parties. The primary elections are staggered generally between January
and June before the general election in November, while the nominating conventions are held in
the summer. This too is also an indirect election process, where voters from each U.S. state and
Washington, D.C., as well as those in U.S. territories, cast ballots for a slate of delegates to a
political party's nominating convention, who then in turn elect their party's presidential nominee.
Each party's presidential nominee or the convention may then choose a vice presidential running
mate to join with him or her on the same ticket, and this choice is often rubber-stamped by the

conventions, depending on that convention's rules. Because of changes to national campaign

finance laws since the 1970s regarding the disclosure of contributions for federal campaigns,
presidential candidates from the major political parties usually declare their intentions to run as
early as the spring of the previous calendar year before the election (almost 18 months before
Inauguration Day)