What's on your ballot?

[Animalor]

Here's a quick question cause I truly don't know.

On your ballot, do you actually vote for Bush/Kerry or do you vote for a democrat/republican rep. in your area?

Up here we vote for the party candidate in our riding and whichever party has the most people elected, it's leader becomes the Prime Minister.

[Tenuvil]

we actually vote for individuals for whatever races are up in the area be they national, state or city. All these candidates run on a party but we vote for the person not the party, though it is possible to pull the "party lever" and vote for the entire slate of candidates in a particular party.

[Waran]

One thing that was interesting in my county in Illinois, they did away with the punch ballots (No more hanging chads!1!) and gave you a black marker to fill in each candidates circle, kind of like a scantron sheet but bigger circles.

We vote for the candidates here, with their party affiliation below their names

[Voronwë]

Bush/Cheney, Kerry/Edwards, and depending on your state you may have Nadar/Camejo (Green) and Badnarek/whoever his VP woul be (Libertarian).

But technically you actually arent voting for them. You are voting for people who will comprise the "Electoral College". Those persons have pledged to vote for their respective candidates, and ultimately reflect the vote you cast.

So lets take my state, Georgia.

Probably around 53% of the votes will go for Bush, and 45% for Kerry. So 15 Republican electors are actually elected. They represent Georgia at the Electoral college where they cast votes for Bush. Whoever gets a total of 270 "electoral votes" is president.

[Sueven]

Keep in mind that Nader isn't actually the green candidate this year. In Pennsylvania, where Nader didn't make the ballot, David Cobb is on as the Green Party candidate.