US election process explained

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton

Unlike in Kenya, electing a US president is a process, not a one-day affair.

In Kenya, the electorate directly casts votes for the president and vice president, with the victors assuming office through popular vote. But in the US, elections boil down to an electoral college whose magic number is 270.

Now, the word 'college' in 'electoral college' does not refer to a place but a process - one that takes months.

According to experts, the process was established as a compromise between the election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens.

The electoral college process consists of three phases: first, the selection of electors, second, the meeting of electors where they vote for president and vice president, and last, the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

The electoral college consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president.

The number of electors in each state is determined by the number of members of Congress (House of Representatives and Senate) the state has.

"It is a confusing system that even most Americans don't understand. However every state has two senators; what varies is the number of members of the House of Representatives," says Patrick Butler, the vice president for programs at the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ).

By voting for their candidates, US voters are also voting for the candidate's electors.

So how does it work?

Unlike in Kenya, the US system grinds slower.

After the presidential election, each governor in the 50 states that form the United States prepares a "Certificate of Ascertainment" listing all the candidates who ran for President in each state along with the names of their respective electors.

According to the archives, the certificate declares the winning presidential candidate in each state and which electors will represent the state at the meeting of the electors in December of the election year.

The electors then meet on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December, after the presidential election, to cast their votes for president and vice president on separate ballots.

The results are then recorded in a certificate of vote and sent to Congress, where they are counted in a joint session of Congress on the 6th of January in the year following the meeting of the electors.

The president of the Senate then declares the winner, who is supposed to take an oath of office on January 20 in the year following the presidential election.

The US territory residents do not vote in the presidential election and are not represented in the electoral college.

In a nutshell, what matters in the US polls is not who won the popular votes in the entire country but who won the big states' (electoral college) 270 electoral votes.