Every four years people in the US vote for who they want to be their president.
The president makes decisions about how the US is run and how it will work with other countries.
The person that is chosen is in charge of the world's biggest superpower.
Some people say that the American president is the most powerful person on Earth.
First, both of the main political parties - Republicans and Democrats - have to pick one candidate each who they want to run for president.
The parties choose their candidate by holding primaries or caucuses in each American state, which are held between January until about June.
In a primary election, the public vote for people called 'delegates' - who are supporting the particular person they want to run for president.
Each state has a certain number of delegates depending on many people live there.
If a candidate wins a state they get all that state's delegates.
'Super Tuesday' - held in February or March - is when many states vote in their primary elections.
The person from each party with the most delegates then becomes their candidate and runs for the job of president!
Caucuses
Some states use a caucus - a local meeting system - instead of holding primaries.
The presidential elections are always held on the first Tuesday in November.
Americans vote for people called 'electors' in their state who are supporting the candidate they want to be president - this process is called the electoral college.
The more people who live in a state, the more electors that state has. So California, which has lots of people living there, has 55 votes. While Delaware, where there aren't as many people, has just three votes.
In total, there are 538 votes across the 50 states and the capital, Washington DC.
The candidate with the most electors wins all the state's electoral college votes.
And the first candidate to win enough states to get to 270 electoral votes becomes the president.
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The United States Electoral College is the institution that elects the President and Vice President of the United States every four years. Citizens of the United States do not directly elect the president or the vice president; instead, these voters directly elect designated intermediaries called "electors," who almost always have pledged to vote for particular presidential and vice presidential candidates (though unpledged electors are possible) and who are themselves selected according to the particular laws of each state. Electors are apportioned to each of the 50 statesas well as to the District of Columbia (also known as Washington, D.C.). The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the Twenty-third Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three. Therefore, there are currently 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 Representatives and 100 Senators, plus the three additional electors from the District of Columbia. The Constitution bars any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.
Except for the electors in Maine and Nebraska, electors are elected on a "winner-take-all" basis. That is, all electors pledged to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in a state become electors for that state. Maine and Nebraska use the "congressional district method", selecting one elector within each congressional district by popular vote and selecting the remaining two electors by a statewide popular vote. Although no elector is required by federal law to honor a pledge, there have been very few occasions when an elector voted contrary to a pledge. The Twelfth Amendment, in specifying how a president and vice president are elected, requires each elector to cast one vote for president and another vote for vice president.
The candidate who receives an absolute majority of electoral votes (currently 270) for the office of president or of vice president is elected to that office. The Twelfth Amendment provides for what happens if the Electoral College fails to elect a president or vice president. If no candidate receives a majority for president, then the House of Representatives will select the president, with each state delegation (instead of each representative) having only one vote. If no candidate receives a majority for vice president, then the Senate will select the vice president, with each senator having one vote. On four occasions, most recently in 2000, the Electoral College system has resulted in the election of a candidate who did not receive the most popular votes in the election.
