The Machinery of Choosing

An American election is a machine with stages, and each stage filters who chooses and what counts.

Stage one filters people. Registration turns the eligible into the enrolled (Gov 201, Gov 202); turnout turns the enrolled into actual voters (Gov 203) — measured three different ways, each telling a different story (Gov 204) — and who passes these filters is patterned by age, income, and education (Gov 206). Stage two filters candidates. Nomination belongs to the parties (Gov 208): primaries and caucuses collect preferences (Gov 209, Gov 210), and delegates carry them to conventions that do the formal choosing (Gov 211). Stage three filters meaning. The general election (Gov 212) counts votes under rules that decide what the votes amount to: plurality crowns winners without majorities (Gov 213, and the twin at 214 shows the difference), while the presidency runs its own machine entirely — state-by-state contests feeding 538 electors, 270 to win, with the national popular total holding no constitutional role (Gov 215, Gov 216). The stages also leak into one another: presidential standing pulls congressional seats along by the coattails (Gov 218), and in some states citizens bypass the whole machine with initiative, referendum, and recall (Gov 219 through 221). Every "the people have spoken" headline is a claim about this machine's output — and the unit's two procedures, reading a poll and reading a return (Gov 180, Gov 230), are the audit tools.