99 Fun Facts About Voting and Elections

How many electors are in the US Electoral College?

538 electors mirror Congress, 435 representatives plus 100 senators, with three more for Washington, D.C., so every census reshuffles how many each state holds.

How many electoral votes does a US presidential candidate need to win outright?

270 is a bare majority of the electors; when nobody gets there the House of Representatives picks the president, as it did after the 1824 election for John Quincy Adams.

Which two states split their electoral votes by congressional district instead of winner-take-all?

Maine and Nebraska give one elector to the winner of each congressional district, so Democrats took a single 'blue dot' vote out of Republican Nebraska in 2008, 2020 and 2024.

Which state has the most electoral votes?

California has 54 electoral votes to Texas's 40, even though it lost one after the 2020 census, the first time in the state's history that its count shrank.

Which amendment gave Washington, D.C. its three electoral votes?

The Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, caps the capital at the electors of the least populous state, so Washington has had exactly three in every election since 1964.

What is a member of the Electoral College who votes against their pledged candidate called?

A faithless elector can be fined or replaced: after several broke their pledges in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 2020 that states may hold electors to them.

US federal Election Day is defined as the Tuesday after the first what in November?

Monday: the 1845 law's wording, 'the Tuesday after the first Monday', means Election Day can never fall on November 1 and always lands between November 2 and 8.

Why was Tuesday originally chosen for US elections?

So farmers could travel after church: Sunday was for worship, polling places were often a day's ride away, and Wednesday was market day, which left Tuesday.

Why was one presidential election day fixed in 1845?

Early results swayed others: until 1845 a state could vote any time in a 34-day window, so news from those that went first could shape turnout and opinion in the rest.

Elections held two years after a US presidential election are called what?

Midterms put every House seat on the ballot halfway through a president's term, and the president's party usually pays: since 1934 it has gained House seats only three times.

US senators serve terms of how many years?

Six years is three times a House member's term, and until the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913 the Constitution had state legislatures, not voters, elect senators.

Which amendment recognised American women's right to vote?

The Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, too late for Susan B. Anthony, who had been arrested for voting in 1872 and died in 1906.

Which state cast the decisive 36th ratification of women's suffrage in 1920?

Tennessee ratified after 24-year-old Harry Burn, who had been voting with the opponents, switched sides on the advice of a letter from his mother.

In which town was the first US women's rights convention held in 1848?

Seneca Falls, New York drew about 300 people, among them Frederick Douglass, who spoke up for the demand that women get the vote when many there wanted it dropped.

Which US state joined the Union in 1890 as the first to give women full voting rights?

Wyoming Territory had let women vote since 1869 and kept the right at statehood, which is why it calls itself the Equality State; Colorado's men voted to follow in 1893.

Which country was the first to give all women the vote in national elections, in 1893?

New Zealand's women voted just ten weeks after the law was signed in September 1893, yet they could not stand for parliament themselves until 1919.

Which suffragist led the 1893 petition campaign that first won women the vote in national elections?

Kate Sheppard's campaign delivered three petitions, the last with nearly 32,000 signatures, and once the vote was won she spent the ten weeks before the election getting women enrolled.

Which of these European countries only gave women the vote in 1944?

France gave women the vote by a decree Charles de Gaulle issued in 1944, and they first cast ballots in 1945, decades after German, Danish and Dutch women.

Which country granted women the vote for the first time in its 2015 local elections?

Saudi Arabia let women vote and stand for the first time in December 2015, and women won seats on several councils, more than two years before they were allowed to drive.

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, barred denying the vote on account of what?

Race, color or past servitude were the only grounds it named, so states found other devices to keep Black citizens from the polls until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Which president signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965?

Lyndon B. Johnson called for the law a week after state troopers beat marchers at Selma in March 1965, telling Congress 'we shall overcome'; he signed it that August.

Which 2013 Supreme Court case struck down the Voting Rights Act's preclearance formula?

Shelby County v. Holder freed states with a history of discrimination from clearing voting changes with Washington; within 24 hours Texas said its blocked voter ID law would take effect.

Which barrier to voting did the Twenty-fourth Amendment ban in 1964?

Poll taxes survived in five states in 1964, and because the amendment covered only federal elections, states could keep charging them in their own until the Supreme Court ended that two years later.

What did the Twenty-sixth Amendment do in 1971?

It lowered the voting age to 18 and was ratified in about 100 days, faster than any other amendment, at a time when 18-year-olds were being drafted for Vietnam.

What was the US voting age before the Twenty-sixth Amendment?

Young men could be drafted at 18 but had no say in the war until 21.

Which country became the first in the European Union to lower its national voting age to 16, in 2007?

Austria cut its voting age from 18 to 16 in 2007, in time for 16-year-olds to vote in the 2008 parliamentary election; outside Europe, Brazil had let them vote since 1988.

Anonymous voting on paper slips in a sealed box is nicknamed after which country?

Australia's colonies introduced government-printed ballots marked in private in 1856, and the system was copied in Britain and the United States under the name 'Australian ballot'.

What name was given to the partly punched scraps of card that held up Florida's 2000 presidential recount?

Hanging chads clung to punch-card ballots by a corner, so counting machines missed the votes and officials had to judge each card by eye; in 2002 Congress paid states to scrap such machines.

Which country has the world's oldest surviving compulsory voting law, dating from the 1890s?

Belgium has compelled its citizens to vote since the 1890s, and although the fines are now rarely enforced, about nine in ten Belgians still turn out.

In which year did the country that gave the secret ballot its nickname make voting compulsory?

Turnout before that ran between 47 and 78 percent of eligible voters.

What marks an Indian voter's finger to stop repeat voting?

Indelible ink contains silver nitrate, which darkens in light and stains the fingernail for weeks; one state-owned factory in Mysore has made it for India's elections since 1962.

Governor Elbridge Gerry's twisting 1812 voting district was likened to which creature, coining a new word?

Salamander was what the long, curling district looked like to critics, who joined it to the governor's name to make 'Gerry-mander'; he pronounced Gerry with a hard G, like Gary.

In gerrymandering, what is 'packing'?

Concentrating opponents' voters in one district wastes their surplus votes there, leaving the mapmaker's party to win the neighbouring seats by safer margins.

Which newspaper first printed the word 'gerrymander' in 1812, mocking a Massachusetts voting district?

The Boston Gazette ran the word in March 1812 under a cartoon of the district as a monster; the map still worked, giving Gerry's party 29 of the 40 state senate seats on about half the vote.

Which state's caucuses have traditionally opened the US presidential nominating season since 1972?

Iowa has gone first since 1972, and Jimmy Carter built his 1976 run on an early showing there; Democrats moved South Carolina ahead of it for 2024, while Republicans kept Iowa first.

What is 'Super Tuesday'?

The day the most states hold primaries can end a race overnight: in 2024 Donald Trump won every state but one, and his last rival, Nikki Haley, dropped out the next day.

Which region's states banded together in 1988 to hold their presidential primaries on one day?

The South's Democratic leaders hoped the bloc would lift a moderate, but Jesse Jackson and Al Gore split the Southern states while Michael Dukakis took Florida and Texas.

What is a US state that could reasonably be won by either major party called?

Swing states, also called battlegrounds or purple states, decide close races: in 2024 all seven of them, from Arizona to Wisconsin, went to Donald Trump.

What is a survey of voters taken as they leave the polling station called?

An exit poll lets broadcasters forecast a result as soon as voting ends; in the US the big news networks club together to commission a single shared one.

In ancient Athens, citizens voted to banish a person for ten years using what?

Pottery shards, called ostraka, gave us the word ostracism; the man named on the most had ten days to leave Athens but kept his property and could return without stigma.

For how many years was an ostracised Athenian banished?

He had ten days to leave; returning early meant death, but his property was kept.

Which slogan sums up the Supreme Court's 1960s rulings that legislative districts must hold roughly equal populations?

One man, one vote was the rule the Court applied in cases such as Reynolds v. Sims in 1964, which made states redraw districts that had not kept pace with decades of growth in the cities.

Which horse-racing phrase names the voting system where the candidate with the most votes simply wins?

First past the post can turn a minority of votes into a big majority: in Britain's 2024 election Labour took 63 percent of the seats with under 34 percent of the vote.

Which five US states elect their governors in odd-numbered years?

Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey and Virginia vote in odd years, three the year before a presidential election and two the year after, so some state picks a governor every year.

In which country do voters in two regions still pass laws by raising hands at an open-air assembly?

Switzerland's cantons of Glarus and Appenzell Innerrhoden still hold a yearly Landsgemeinde; Appenzell's kept women out until the federal supreme court ordered them admitted in 1990.

What is the argument that a rational voter's costs exceed their expected benefits called?

The paradox of voting, analysed by Anthony Downs in 1957, is that one ballot almost never decides an election, so a purely self-interested citizen would stay home, yet millions vote.

Which third-party candidate's 46 electoral votes in 1968 spurred the House to vote to abolish the Electoral College?

George Wallace came close to throwing the 1968 election into the House, which voted by more than four to one the next year to scrap the Electoral College; a Senate filibuster killed the plan in 1970.

What is a public vote on a single question, such as the UK's 2016 decision on EU membership, called?

A referendum hands one decision straight to voters; the UK's 2016 vote went 52 to 48 percent for leaving the EU, and Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation the next morning.

Voting by shouting aye or no rather than by ballot is called what?

A voice vote leaves no record of who voted how: the presiding officer simply judges which side sounded louder, and any member who doubts the call can ask for a count.

Which newspaper's famously wrong 1948 front page declared Thomas Dewey the victor over Harry Truman?

Chicago Tribune printers were on strike, so the paper went to press hours early on a pundit's forecast. About 150,000 copies ran before the fix, and Truman held one up for photographers.

Which future president's campaign treated 391 voters to 160 gallons of alcohol in a 1758 colonial election?

George Washington was following a custom so routine it had a name, swilling the planters with bumbo, after a drink of rum, sugar and nutmeg.

Stubbs, honorary mayor of the Alaskan town of Talkeetna from 1997 to 2017, was what kind of animal?

Cat: Stubbs took the title as a kitten and drew dozens of tourists a day. The tale that he won as a write-in is a myth, since tiny Talkeetna has no real mayor and held no election.

Which US state passed a 1997 law letting NASA astronauts cast ballots electronically from orbit?

Texas acted because most astronauts live and vote near Houston, and one had been unable to vote from the Mir station in 1996. David Wolf cast the first ballot from space the next year.

Which 1860 presidential candidate grew a beard after an 11-year-old girl said it would win votes?

Abraham Lincoln took Grace Bedell's advice, then met her on his inaugural journey in February 1861 to show off the new whiskers.

Which film star became a US governor in 2003 after voters recalled the sitting Democrat, Gray Davis?

Arnold Schwarzenegger beat a field of 135 replacement candidates, in only the second recall of a governor in American history.

Florida's 'hanging chads' in the 2000 presidential recount came from which kind of voting equipment?

Punch-card machines left a chad clinging to the card when a hole was not punched cleanly through, and the tabulators did not count those votes. The fiasco hastened the end of punch-card voting.

Which country ran a 2009 polling station in Gir Forest for just one voter, a temple priest?

India opened more than 800,000 polling stations that year to shorten voters' journeys, and officials singled this one out as the only booth in the country serving a single elector.

Which writer's mysterious 1849 death has been blamed on 'cooping', a violent form of election fraud?

Edgar Allan Poe was found on an election day in shabby clothes thought not to be his own. Cooping gangs drugged men and marched them between polls in disguise, though it is one theory among many.

Cacareco, who drew 100,000 protest votes in a 1959 São Paulo election, was what kind of zoo animal?

Rhinoceros: Cacareco out-polled every party in the race even though officials had refused her candidacy, and she later inspired Canada's satirical Rhinoceros Party.

What name is given to the locked meeting of cardinals that elects a new pope in the Sistine Chapel?

Conclave comes from the Latin for 'with a key'. The lock-in became church law after a papal election at Viterbo dragged on for nearly three years and townspeople tore the roof off the palace.

Which two nominees faced off in the first US presidential debates, a series of four TV encounters?

Kennedy and Nixon set no lasting trend at first: after their 1960 series, no presidential debate was held again until 1976.

What nickname describes an official still in office after a successor has already been elected?

Lame duck began as 18th-century London Stock Exchange slang for a broker who defaulted on his debts, long before it was applied to politicians on their way out.

Who tied Thomas Jefferson in the Electoral College in 1800, forcing the House to pick the president?

Aaron Burr was Jefferson's own running mate, but each won 73 electoral votes. The House needed 36 ballots to break the tie, and Hamilton's lobbying against Burr helped settle it.

Which US president won four straight elections, the only one ever to serve more than two terms?

Franklin Roosevelt won every presidential election from 1932 until he died early in his last term; a later amendment barred anyone from winning more than two.

Which country held its first election open to citizens of all races over four days in April 1994?

South Africa saw millions queue over the four days, the climax of a four-year process that dismantled apartheid and handed Nelson Mandela's ANC a landslide.

Who is the only US president never elected as either president or vice president?

Gerald Ford was appointed vice president in 1973, inherited the presidency the following year, and then narrowly lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter.

Which joke British party founded by Screaming Lord Sutch saw its pet passports policy become law?

Monster Raving Loony Party manifestos also called for all-day pub opening and scrapping dog licences, both of which happened, though its 99p coin is still waiting.

Which Hollywood star, elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in 1986, made street ice cream legal there?

Clint Eastwood served a single two-year term and gave his $200 monthly salary to the town's youth centre.

Which Harper's Weekly cartoonist is credited with first depicting the Republican Party as an elephant?

Thomas Nast also popularised the Democratic donkey and, in 1863, drew what is generally recognised as the first modern Santa Claus.

Which capital elected comedian Jón Gnarr mayor in 2010 after his satirical Best Party topped the poll?

Reykjavík's voters gave the Best Party six of the fifteen council seats; Gnarr had founded it months earlier as pure satire, with people who had no background in politics.

Which West African country introduced voting by marble in the 1960s, each drop into a drum ringing a bell?

The Gambia brought in marbles so voters who could not read could take part: each candidate gets a drum in party colours bearing a portrait, and a bell confirms each vote as the marble drops.

Which northern European country was the first to let voters cast ballots online in a national parliamentary election?

Estonia tried internet voting in local elections in 2005 and used it for parliament in 2007; by 2023 more than half of all votes there were cast online.

In which country do voters handwrite a candidate's or party's name on a blank ballot paper?

Japan's voters write the name out themselves in national and most local elections, and for the House of Representatives they fill in two slips, one for a candidate and one for a party.

Which US state has listed 'None of These Candidates' as a choice on statewide ballots since 1975?

Nevada's protest line cannot actually win: when it has topped a contest, the best-placed real candidate has still been declared the winner.

Dixville Notch, a village famous for casting its presidential ballots at midnight, is in which US state?

New Hampshire made the hamlet its own precinct after a resident tired of a 45-minute drive to vote; its handful of electors have gathered at midnight since 1960.

Which state became the first in the US to run its elections entirely by mail after a 1998 ballot measure?

Oregon voters approved the change by more than two to one, through a citizens' initiative rather than an act of the legislature.

On which day of the week are British general elections held by long-standing convention?

Thursday is custom rather than law, and the timing is otherwise up to the prime minister, who may call a general election at any point within a five-year term.

In Canadian politics, what informal name is commonly used for an electoral district?

Riding is the everyday English term, while French speakers say comté; both echo the counties that electoral districts were organised around in the 1800s.

Which New York City political machine became a national byword for graft under William 'Boss' Tweed?

Tammany Hall began in the 1780s as a social club, and it was Tweed's 1873 conviction for embezzlement that fixed its reputation for corruption across the country.

Which billionaire won nearly 19 percent of the 1992 presidential vote as an independent candidate?

Ross Perot carried no states at all, yet it was the best showing by a candidate from outside the two main parties since 1912.

Which presidential candidate's enemies mocked him as a stubborn donkey, inspiring the Democratic mascot?

Andrew Jackson's foes twisted his surname into 'jackass', but Democrats liked the insult's common-man ring and kept the animal as their own.

Who in 1972 became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's US presidential nomination?

Shirley Chisholm had already made history four years earlier as the first Black woman elected to Congress, and her campaign won 28 delegates in the state contests.

Who became the first woman on a major-party US presidential ticket as Walter Mondale's 1984 running mate?

Geraldine Ferraro, a congresswoman from Queens and former prosecutor, was also the first widely recognised Italian American on a major-party national ticket.

Before the Seventeenth Amendment took effect in 1913, who chose members of the US Senate?

State legislatures sometimes deadlocked so badly over the choice that a state went without any senators, which, with bribery scandals, built the case for direct election.

The word 'candidate' comes from the Latin for which colour, worn by Romans seeking office?

White togas, chalked and bleached until they gleamed, marked out Roman office-seekers at speeches and debates; the Latin candidus means shining white.

What term describes a popular party leader pulling in votes for lesser candidates on the same ticket?

Coattail effect pictures lesser candidates carried into office on a winner's coat; a victorious president's party will often gain seats in Congress at the same election.

Vermin Supreme, the perennial US candidate who promises everyone a free pony, is known for wearing what as a hat?

A boot sits on his head on the campaign trail, alongside a giant toothbrush and a pledge to make brushing your teeth the law.

How did ancient Athens fill most of its public offices, including its council of 500?

By drawing lots, with purpose-built allotment machines called kleroteria, Athenians hoped to stop the wealthy from buying their way into office.

Who was the first US president to win two terms that were not back to back, in 1884 and 1892?

Grover Cleveland in fact won the popular vote three times running: in 1888 he lost only in the Electoral College, to Benjamin Harrison, and beat him in the rematch.

Which Democrat won a majority of the popular vote in 1876 but lost the presidency by one electoral vote?

Samuel Tilden is the only candidate ever to lose with an outright majority of the popular vote; a commission handed all 20 disputed electoral votes to Rutherford Hayes, 185 to 184.

Which 1844 winner, picked on his party's ninth convention ballot, is called the first 'dark horse' nominee?

James K. Polk broke the mould: every earlier president had been a vice president, a secretary of state or a senior general, and Whigs mocked him by pretending never to have heard of him.

Which Socialist ran for US president in 1920 from a federal prison cell, his fifth bid for the office?

Eugene V. Debs had been jailed over a speech denouncing American participation in the First World War, and still took 3.4 percent of the vote as a convict.

Who in 1954 became the first person ever elected to the US Senate as a write-in candidate?

Strom Thurmond organised the campaign after party leaders named a replacement nominee without a primary election, and he pledged to resign within two years to force one.

Which light-sensitive compound gives election ink the stain that marks a voter's finger for weeks?

Silver nitrate darkens the skin on exposure to ultraviolet light and cannot be washed off, fading only as the outer skin cells are replaced.

Which president's nickname 'Old Kinderhook' helped popularise the expression OK during his 1840 campaign?

Martin Van Buren was a native of Kinderhook, New York, and the nationwide publicity around the race spread the two letters across the country almost overnight.

The phrase 'smoke-filled room' arose from reports of a 1920 hotel meeting said to have picked which nominee?

Warren G. Harding was a relatively minor candidate until, legend has it, Republican power-brokers settled on him as a compromise in a private meeting at the Blackstone Hotel.

Psephology, the study of elections and voting, takes its name from the Greek word for which object?

Pebble is the root because ancient Greeks cast their votes with small stones; a British scholar coined the word in 1948 when a friend asked for a name for the study of elections.

Which state elected Mel Carnahan to the US Senate in 2000, three weeks after he died in a plane crash?

Missouri's voters chose their late governor over the sitting senator, John Ashcroft, and his widow, Jean Carnahan, was appointed to fill the seat.

Which candidate did the House choose as president in 1824, though a rival had won more electoral votes?

John Quincy Adams won on the first House ballot, in the only election where the candidate with the most electoral votes failed to become president.