History UsefulNotes / AmericanPoliticalSystem

[[caption-width-right:281:Caution: Reality outside 495 may differ from reality inside 495.]]\\

The UsefulNotes/UnitedStates is a [[UsefulNotes/AmericanFederalism federal]] republic consisting principally of [[UsefulNotes/TheSeveralStates 50 states]]. When people of other nations are trying to understand the rather odd political behavior of the USA, they would do well to remember that the United States is literally just that: fifty individual states, each with its own constitution, all under the aegis of a central federal government. The relationship between the federal government and the state governments can get contentious, to the point that there [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar was a civil war partly about this.]]\\
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Elected representatives from the 50 states meet in the District of Columbia, which consists entirely of one city, UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC. Note that distinction: DC is ''in'' the United States, but not ''of'' them.[[note]]This is to prevent it from being too heavily affected by any one state's petty local politics. UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} was the original capital until the UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} state legislature effectively [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Mutiny_of_1783 held Congress hostage in 1783]], which convinced everyone else this was a bad idea.[[/note]] The result includes the oddity that the citizens of DC -- despite paying taxes -- have no voting representation in the legislative branch (merely a non-voting representative), and until 1961 couldn't vote in presidential elections. This is {{irony}} from the country that revolted under the battle cry, "No taxation without representation!" The city's residents are disgruntled about it enough that the official DC automobile license plate reads "Taxation Without Representation." To people who live in DC (though not so much the people who work there, many of whom live in bedroom communities across state lines, further complicating the issue of local politics), this is so serious that, when the city got its [[RuleOfThree third]] UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball franchise, the local population didn't want a third team bearing the name Washington Senators, because, although at any given time, 100 senators are tasked with working ''in'' Washington, the District itself has none of its own.\\
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There is a feeling among some Americans that there may be a reality distortion field of some sort that follows the outer edge of the Capital Beltway (a highway that circles D.C.). Attempts to prove this fail to obtain federal funding.\\
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Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy". This is ''debatably'' true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person saying this what they mean before nodding sagely. [[note]]Freedom House's rating on the US is a useful guide here beyond the semantic comparison of what is a republic versus what is a democracy.[[/note]] The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (à la, say, [[UsefulNotes/AncientGreece ancient Athens]]) [[DemocracyIsBad was a generally bad idea]]. For example, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson claimed ''"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."'' More colloquially: "Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner." That said, direct democracy does in fact exist on smaller levels in the United States, namely the "town meeting" form of government often practiced in the New England states, in which citizens may show up to vote directly on town laws and ordinances, as well as poll-style voting utilized in some states to vote on specific laws (signs reading "Vote YES/NO on Prop. 47" or something similar will often be ubiquitous in such states come election season). The debate over to what extent the government should engage in majority-ruled democracy or function as a democratic republic, or whether ultimate authority should rest with a strong centralized government (federalism) or with the individual state (anti-federalism/confederacy) predates the existence of the country itself, and is still debated today, with citizens, politicians, and pundits alike jumping from one side to the other (depending on which would result in their side of an issue winning).\\
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Unlike many other nations, the US has had precisely one written constitution since independence in 1776,[[note]]Kind of. The Constitution was ratified in 1789; the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Articles of Confederation]] were a wash and [[CanonDiscontinuity don't count]].[[/note]] which is referred to simply as "the Constitution". This makes it the second oldest written national constitution still in effect,[[note]]The oldest, the constitution of UsefulNotes/SanMarino, went into effect in 1600.[[/note]] and the third oldest still in effect overall.[[note]]The Constitution of UsefulNotes/{{Massachusetts}}, drafted by UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin, went into effect in 1780 and had significant influence on the federal one.[[/note]] The Constitution defines itself as "the supreme law of the land", and all other statutes and acts of government must defer to it or be rendered null and void. Since its drafting, the US Constitution has served as an inspiration for many other written constitutions around the globe. Indeed, it was the USA that [[TropeCodifier popularized]] the codified constitution -- of the nations of the world, only the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom, UsefulNotes/NewZealand, and UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} have uncodified constitutions, something which law students from those countries continue to lament bitterly come finals time.\\
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The Constitution is not set in stone. To date, there have been 27 amendments, the first ten of which are referred to collectively as the Bill of Rights and were adopted before the Constitution was even ratified. This gives you an idea of how hard the amendment process is -- 17 afterthoughts, one of which is in there to repeal an earlier afterthought (18 and 21, the Prohibition-related amendments). Not only that, but the 27th Amendment was actually proposed with the Bill of Rights -- it took some 200 years between proposal and ratification (not surprising, seeing as it limits Congress in giving itself raises). As a result of its stability and endurance, arguably-most Americans have a deep respect for the Constitution -- a respect that can become downright reverential for some people. This makes it really quite difficult even to get a movement to ''propose'' an amendment, to the frustration of many aspiring reformers.\\
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The executive branch of government comprises [[UsefulNotes/ThePresidentsOfTheUnitedStates the President]], [[UsefulNotes/TheVicePresidentsOfTheUnitedStates Vice President]], and the Cabinet.\\
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Unlike in many other nations, the US president is both head of state and head of government. The president's principal powers are to sign or veto bills approved by Congress and to appoint Cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, Supreme Court judges, and other federal judges (all with Senate approval), to sign treaties (also subject to the Senate's approval) and to issue pardons (which are not subject to anyone's approval). The president is also the commander-in-chief of the military and is the highest-ranking individual in the chain of command, though they are not personally considered part of the military.[[note]]Even if they were a military officer before becoming president their former rank is now meaningless as far as the chain of command is concerned. For example, UsefulNotes/DwightDEisenhower was a five-star general before becoming president but then reclaimed his rank after his presidency ended. Of course, as far as the Army was concerned, the difference in who Eisenhower could give orders to as president versus as a five-star general amounted to, basically, "Omar Bradley."[[/note]] The president may issue "executive orders", directives to the Cabinet instructing them on the enforcement of laws. Most executive orders are generally kept running by the next president in line, as presidents protect the prerogatives of the office, though this trend has fallen off as presidents have gotten a lot more eager to issue the orders along ideological lines. All those powers and responsibilities get summed up under the amorphous heading of "leadership", with all the free credit and lightning-rod for dissatisfaction that that entails. You don't have to be crazy to run for President. The Office will do that for you -- or, if you prefer, to you.\\
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The Vice President, in contrast, [[VicePresidentWho has little authority]] and more often functions as a government spokesperson. The vice presidency might be the cushiest job in the world because it comes with ''absolutely nothing to do'' unless one of two things fails: the president's heartbeat or the Senate. To be more precise, they officially have two jobs. The first is basically to sit around and wait for the President of the United States to drop dead (or otherwise become incapable of carrying out the duties of the office of President); the second is to act as President of the Senate with nothing to do and no right to vote, except cast a tie-breaking vote if there is a deadlock.\\
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UsefulNotes/JohnAdams, the very first vice president, described his office as "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived." John Nance Garner, UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's first vice president, was more direct, describing the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm piss".[[note]]So direct, in fact, that for years this phrase was {{bowdlerise}}d as "not worth a bucket of warm ''spit''".[[/note]] (Ironically, FDR went on to become only the seventh president ever to die in office, although Roosevelt had ditched Garner long before.)\\
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At several points in American history the vice president has been, in effect, the Highest Elected Patsy, and has "taken the fall" for the administration. Since UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (where UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman didn't know about the Manhattan Project until he got promoted), the VP has gained more influence, but it varies between administrations -- Dick Cheney was seen as very powerful, while his two immediate successors Joe Biden and UsefulNotes/MikePence were less so.\\
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A presidential term lasts four years, and an individual president is limited to two terms, with the total time in office not to exceed ten years. In other words, a vice president who ascended to the presidency more than halfway through one four-year term could run for re-election twice, as Lyndon Johnson was eligible to do (though he chose not to because backlash against UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar had made him increasingly unpopular). Originally a tradition, this was later codified in the Constitution through the 22nd Amendment in 1951, after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to four consecutive terms, only leaving office because he died early in his fourth term. Presidential elections are held every four years, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.\\
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Actually, ''all'' elections are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in the month of the election. This has twisted, complicated historical reasons. The founding fathers didn't want the election to fall on the first of the month, because business owners would be balancing their checkbooks on this day.[[note]]After breaking free from England, the Founding Fathers valued the right to conduct free enterprise as they chose.[[/note]] Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday were out of the question, as those were religious days for many (the latter being a sabbatical day for many agrarian communities). Friday and Monday were then excluded, as those days surrounded the weekends. British elections were on Thursdays, and Americans wanted to break free from British traditions. By process of elimination, then, Tuesday became the best choice, ''but'' if the election were on the first Tuesday of the month, then in some years, the Electoral College would then convene over a month after the election, a violation of existing laws. Finally, the election was set to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday.\\
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Historically, the president is a white Protestant, though not always. UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy was Catholic, which was a big deal, and UsefulNotes/BarackObama's father was a black African man, which was an even ''bigger'' deal. Historically, the president has also always been male, though fiction has delighted in depicting female presidents and the possibility is considered nigh inevitable by now. In fact, UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton came ''very'' close to being chosen as the Democratic candidate for president in 2008, was considered a virtual lock for the position until Obama's rise to prominence, and made history (again) by clinching the nomination after a much more successful primary fight in 2016. Both these generalizations apply equally well to the vice president (three times a woman has been a major party's nomination for veep, the Democrats first picking Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and Kamala Harris in 2020, and the Republicans picking Sarah Palin in 2008; Herbert Hoover's VP, Charles Curtis, was three-eighths Native American; Joe Biden was the first Catholic VP before going on to be president himself with Harris as veep).\\
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Note the requirement is technically a little more flexible than "only native-born", but unless you were alive in September 1787 ''and'' living between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, it's pretty much limited to the native born. Either way, UsefulNotes/JohnMcCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone) qualified.[[note]]"Any person born in the Canal Zone on or after February 26, 1904, and whether before or after the effective date of this chapter, whose father or mother or both at the time of the birth of such person was or is a citizen of the United States, is declared to be a citizen of the United States."--8 USC § 1403[[/note]] One can be born anywhere on Earth (or space) and still be a "natural-born citizen" of the U.S. if at least one of your parents is an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for five years. A person born within the territorial boundaries of the United States is a natural-born citizen regardless of parentage, unless said person's parents are foreign diplomats or members of an invading force.\\
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The only two presidents who have ever been truly challenged for being ineligible to date are Barack Obama and UsefulNotes/ChesterAArthur. Challengers to Obama claimed that he was actually born in UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}} and that his Hawaiian birth certificate and newspaper birth announcements were forgeries, no doubt by the same people who orchestrated the Area 51 coverup.[[note]]Even if it were true, he would still be a natural-born U.S. citizen because his mother was one, and while he was born after that law took effect, under the statutes of the time he was born he only needed to live in the U.S. for a few years to be considered a natural-born U.S. citizen, which his academic record more than verifies.[[/note]] President Obama originally chose to ignore the allegations, likely perceiving them of beneath his attention, but eventually got so annoyed that he released his long-form birth certificate, then splashed it on a mug with the slogan "Made in the USA" and killed UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden about two days later, which effectively shut up all but the noisiest of the "birther theorists". As for Chester Arthur, he was accused by Arthur Hinman of being born in UsefulNotes/{{Ireland}}. No one took up that story, so Hinman [[MovingTheGoalposts then claimed Chester had been born in]] UsefulNotes/{{Canada}}. Nobody could decide which was worse, so they elected Chester vice president. After Chester became ''president'', Hinman wrote a book called ''How a British Subject Became President of the United States''.\\
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The positions of president and vice president were pretty well set up after 1800 as to who got them and what they did. The only real controversy occurred in 1841, when UsefulNotes/WilliamHenryHarrison became the first president to die in office, taking ill at his inauguration that March 4 and dying thirty-one days later. The Constitution's ExactWords said that should some circumstance (death, incapacitation, expulsion) keep the president from using the office's powers and fulfilling its responsibilities, "the Same shall devolve on the Vice President." Note that it doesn't explicitly say that the veep ''becomes'' president. The brouhaha was settled when Harrison's vice president, UsefulNotes/JohnTyler, just took the oath and did it anyway.[[note]]To modern people, the fact that this was considered controversial may be surprising, but Tyler's opponents actually referred to him with the mocking title "His Accidency".[[/note]] This was finally patched into law by the 25th Amendment in 1967.\\
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Also, if the sitting president dies and the vice president takes the presidential oath, where do we get a ''new'' veep? Until the 25th Amendment was ratified, the office was just left empty. The first four people to ascend to the presidency never were elected to a full term.[[note]]In fact, none of them was even renominated: Tyler had been excommunicated from the Whig Party by 1844, UsefulNotes/MillardFillmore was denied renomination as his lenient attitude towards slavery made him unpopular with northern Whigs by 1852, UsefulNotes/AndrewJohnson's impeachment trial made him unpopular even with fellow Democrats by 1868, and Arthur's supporters were divided between him and another candidate in 1884, costing him the Republican nomination to a more unifying candidate in James G. Blaine, and thus never had a vice president.[[/note]] That amendment lets the sitting president just appoint a new vice president. This led to a man who never received even one electoral vote ascending to the presidency. In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned over income tax evasion and was replaced by longtime UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}} congressman UsefulNotes/GeraldFord. The president at the time was UsefulNotes/RichardNixon. Compounding the magnitude of this provision, when Nixon resigned, Ford promptly pardoned the man who had just made him President, preventing Nixon from being put on trial for his various crimes.[[note]]He later cited this as MyGreatestFailure.[[/note]]\\
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The 25th Amendment also allows a president to relinquish the office ''temporarily'' due to incapacitation. So far this has only been used when the president has to undergo some medical procedure that requires anesthesia, so that if something truly terrible happens while the president is knocked out, there will be an acting president who can take action immediately without provoking a constitutional conflict. It's never happened and may never, but why take the risk? The 25th Amendment further allows the VP and a majority of the Cabinet to declare a president unfit for duty and remove him, even against his will, causing the VP to become acting president immediately. This is a safety valve of obvious last resort and has never yet been invoked in practice, though during the term of controversial President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, some very noisy voices suggested that he should have been ousted using it. ''Film/AirForceOne'' and ''Series/TwentyFour'' have both used it for its dramatic possibilities, though.\\
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The Constitution itself lets Congress decide what happens if both President and Vice President of the United States are gone. Currently, this falls under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947. It goes from President, to Vice President, to Speaker of the House, to President ''pro tempore'' of the Senate, to the Cabinet members in order of the Cabinet post's longevity. Since the US hasn't gone past 'vice president' yet on the list, the fact that it ends at the Cabinet hasn't been tested. A person in the line of succession must satisfy the constitutional eligibility requirement -- a foreign-born cabinet officer (e.g., Elaine Chao, who led the Labor and Transportation departments under Bush 43 and Trump respectively)[[note]]German-born UsefulNotes/HenryKissinger, who as Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford would have gotten as close as ''third'' in line if not for the natural-born citizen requirement, is an even better example.[[/note]] would be passed over.\\
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The Secret Service designates one member of the line of succession the "Designated Survivor" to stay behind at any event where the entire line could be zapped, which is pretty much only the State of the Union Address (where the President, Vice President, both houses of Congress, the entire Cabinet, and the Supreme Court are all gathered together in a single building). It's always a minor Cabinet member, too. So yes, one night a year, there's a chance that [[Series/BattlestarGalactica2003 the Secretary of Education]], [[Series/DesignatedSurvivor the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development]], or the [[ComicBook/YTheLastMan Secretary of Agriculture]] could end up as President.\\
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UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan, notably, broke the curse. He was elected in 1980, then was shot and badly wounded in 1981 but survived the attack, and the Twenty-Year Curse seems to have ended, as UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush got elected in 2000 and served (and survived) two full terms. This doesn't mean there weren't assassination attempts made on other presidents; thankfully, however, none have been killed.\\
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The President and Vice President are ''not'' elected directly by the people, but rather by a group called the Electoral College, a body created by the Founding Fathers to preserve the power of the smaller states in the voting process. They were also wary about the idea of the 'mob' directly electing presidents, so they encouraged each state's legislature to choose its electors. It is only since the 20th century that all states allow civilians to choose the electors. Technically, the Constitution has always given state legislatures the power to decide how their state's electors are chosen, which has never changed. It's just that public demand eventually led every state to choose the electors via actual elections. In theory, a state could allocate its electors by flipping a coin if the legislature passed a law to say so.\\
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Each state boasts a number of electors equal to its congressional representation: two senators plus however many representatives. When the College meets, about one month after the election, each state's electors vote for the presidential candidates. Each state is allowed to set its own laws for how the electors vote, but in recent years 48 states have granted all their votes to whomever received the largest number of popular votes in their state; UsefulNotes/{{Maine}} and Nebraska are the outliers, giving two electoral votes to the statewide popular-vote winner and one more to the person who wins in each of their congressional districts.\\
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Whichever presidential slate receives 50% + 1 of the electoral votes (since 1964, this has meant 270 out of 538) is elected. In the rare event that no candidate receives the needed number of electoral votes, the House of Representatives votes in the new president, with the Senate selecting the vice president. This has only happened once, in 1824 when the House selected UsefulNotes/JohnQuincyAdams over UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson (who won the largest pluralities of both the electoral ''and'' popular votes) in a four-man race.\\
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On those occasions when a loser of the ''popular'' election gains office through this process -- thankfully rare, but it's happened five times: in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 -- many Americans become confused and outraged. All the news media are required to run articles explaining this all again for about two weeks, at which point it is promptly forgotten by Americans who have since moved on to something else outrageously confusing, like why all the rich celebrities are ending up in rehab all the time.\\
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There have been numerous attempts throughout the years to change the system, but none has succeeded. The closest anyone ever got was early in the Nixon administration in 1969, when he and Congress attempted to implement a system that would eliminate the EC and use a run-off between the top two vote-getters if no one got over 50% in the first round. It sailed through the House on a huge margin but couldn't get over the hump in the Senate or state legislatures because of Dixiecrat opposition. It came up a dozen votes short of earning the necessary supermajority in the Senate, was filibustered, and died when the congressional term ended.\\
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Because the number of electors is roughly equivalent to population density, theoretically all it takes to be elected president is to win the eleven states that have the most delegates: UsefulNotes/{{California}}, UsefulNotes/{{Texas}}, UsefulNotes/{{New York|State}}, UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}, Illinois, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, UsefulNotes/{{Michigan}}, UsefulNotes/{{Georgia|USA}}, UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina, and UsefulNotes/NewJersey. A presidential candidate carrying said 11 states will win the election even if their opponent wins every delegate from all the other 39 states ''and'' the District of Columbia. In practice, though, this rarely happens (outside of occasional years like 1936, 1972, or 1984) because many states across the spectrum of population count are considered 'safe' for one of the two biggest parties -- for example, since the 1990s, the Democratic presidential candidates have won California by comfortable margins, while the Republicans have done the same with Texas (although it's getting less Republican with every passing year). In an extreme example, the GOP has won each one of UsefulNotes/{{Oklahoma|USA}}'s ''77 counties'' in every presidential election since 2000.\\
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Thus, a lot of campaign drama ends up happening in 'swing' or 'battleground' states, states that have become strategically important in the election. Since each senator counts for one electoral vote, it's the ''smaller'' states that have a disproportionately large influence in the Electoral College. To win these states, presidential hopefuls spend oodles on advertising, travel, staff, and various other campaign expenses, all for a job which pays a mere $400,000 per year over four years. (Seriously--you can make more money running a school district.) And yet, the winner is largely in charge of how the American government spends its revenue. The irony of this is not lost on the American people.\\
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The president's cabinet by tradition consists of the leaders of the 15 executive departments -- State, the Treasury, Defense, Justice, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs (there are a ''lot'' of US military veterans), and Homeland Security. Each department is headed by an official called a Secretary (with a capital S), except for the Department of Justice, whose chief is called the Attorney General instead. They're all appointed by the president, subject to Senate approval, and the parameters of their responsibilities are defined in federal law. They are in legal contemplation the president's deputies with respect to the departments they head, which in simple terms means that they are the personal representatives of the president and that they have the final say in the internal and external management functions of their departments.\\
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The average American (excluding the editors of the [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=GOVMAN U.S. Government Manual]] and [[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR the Congressional Directory]], and maybe Creator/TomClancy) [[SmallReferencePools has heard of maybe two or three of these guys]], maybe four if they keep up enough with current events or teach political science, usually taken from the 'Big Four' quartet: the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and the Attorney General, positions that date back to the literal [[UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington Washington]] administration. The Cabinet typically also includes the Vice President, the President's Chief of Staff, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Unlike in many other countries, the cabinet meetings are not the avenue where major policy decisions are made in foreign and military affairs: that takes place in the National Security Council, where only the relevant officials participate, such as the President, Vice President, and Secretaries of State and Defense (the Secretary of Education, for instance, doesn't need to know of diplomatic talks with a crazy playboy dictator, weapons sales to UsefulNotes/{{Israel|isWithInfraredMissiles}}, or the invasion plans of the next Middle Eastern oil state waiting in line).\\
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Under the auspices of the Secretaries and the Attorney General are the various government agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration, for example, reports to the Secretary of Transportation and the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanLawEnforcement Federal Bureau of Investigation]] reports to the Attorney General. Some agencies may be (or were) in counter-intuitive departments. The Secret Service (originally founded to combat counterfeiting) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (usually simply called "ATF"; "Explosives" was added to the title relatively recently) reported to the Secretary of the Treasury before the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2003.\\
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The ''Department of Defense'' ([=DoD=]), in the vernacular known as UsefulNotes/ThePentagon (named after the geometrical shape of its headquarters building), is so freaking large in comparison with the other departments that almost 80 percent of the federal workforce gets their paycheck from it, and that the Department of Defense is considered the single largest employer in the U.S. (right ahead of UsefulNotes/{{Walmart}} and UsefulNotes/McDonalds). The Office of the Secretary of Defense is the mainly civilian staff of the Secretary of Defense, and apart from the Honorable Mr. or Madam Secretary (who incidentally must be a civilian to maintain the alibi of civilian control, unless Congress approves an exemption), there is one Deputy Secretary of Defense, five Under Secretaries of Defense, 14 Assistant Secretaries of Defense (all appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate); and a myriad of senior civil servants with titles like Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for P, and Deputy Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Q...\\
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Had enough of secretaries? In addition, Defense contains a raft of sub-departments, known as military departments (Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, and Department of the Air Force) which include all the armed forces (except for the UsefulNotes/CoastGuard, which operates under Homeland Security during peacetime and under the Department of the Navy during war or at the president's discretion), and they are led by their very own secretaries, namely the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy (or [[Series/{{NCIS}} SECNAV as the special agents]] [[Series/{{JAG}} and service members alike call him or her]]), and the Secretary of the Air Force who are subordinates of the Secretary of Defense. Each of those secretaries, as you might have guessed, has their very own under secretary, and at least four assistant secretaries (five in the Army) each.\\
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Furthermore, Defense includes several large joint organizations (meaning that civilians and military personnel from all services participate) such as the [[UsefulNotes/{{NSA}} National Security Agency]] (the people who know that you're reading this article), the National Reconnaissance Office (the people whose satellites can spot insects on your lawn), the Defense Logistics Agency (big bloated defense bureaucracy in action) and DARPA (mad scientists studying brain implants). For more on the stiff yet crazy world of the U.S. military, see UsefulNotes/YanksWithTanks.\\
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There are also a few "independent agencies", like the Federal Communications Commission, [[UsefulNotes/{{CIA}} Central Intelligence Agency]] and UsefulNotes/{{NASA}}, that don't report to any of the departments, just to make organization charts that much more confusing to average Americans and foreign spies alike.\\
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In aggregate, all this confusion is commonly referred to as The Bureaucracy: the number two government source of fear, after the Internal Revenue Service (itself part of the Department of the Treasury).\\
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The legislative branch of government consists of two houses -- the House of Representatives (often simply "the House") and the Senate. The House members were elected directly by the populace of each state, while the senators of each state were appointed by the state assemblies. The basic idea was one of tension between the two houses, the better to represent the rights of individual people ''and'' those of the states alike. However, since the ratification of the 17th Amendment, representatives and senators alike are now directly elected by popular vote within each state, turning the Senate into just another 100 congress members.[[note]]They could be called at-large congress members -- not to be confused with the people who've sat as the only House member for a state with so few people it merits only one congressional district, or with the historical at-large House members that many states once had, a practice that tailed off in the early-mid 20th century.[[/note]]Still, the Senate does continue to represent the state's interest in a different way: every state gets two senators, so each state, no matter how large or how small, has the same amount of representation in the Senate (Quick linguistic note: while both Senators and Representatives are members of Congress, the term "Congressperson" is pretty much exclusively used for members of the House. Senators ''really'' want you to call them "Senator").\\
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The House of Representatives has 435 members apportioned among the states based on their population. Representatives are elected every two years and there is no limit on the number of terms one may serve. Apportionment is recalculated every ten years, after each national census. Each state is free to determine how congressional districts (similar to parliamentary constituencies in the UK) are drawn up. This can lead to a practice called "gerrymandering" where the party in charge draws up [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maryland_US_Congressional_District_3_(since_2013).tif ridiculously-shaped districts]] to secure as many safe districts for themselves as possible, while splitting up the other party's strongholds across multiple districts. Gerrymandering is legal in most states. Both parties squawk about reform, but neither is willing to be the first one to give up its precious "safe seats". The name, incidentally, goes right back to the beginnings of the Republic, first appearing around 1812 and taking its name from Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry. [[OlderThanTheyThink The practice might have started even earlier.]]\\
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While the House of Representatives is generally referred to as the "junior" house, this has little practical meaning, as bills can originate in either house, with the exception that bills for raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. The House also reserves the power to impeach the president or other federal officers upon a simple majority vote, whereupon a trial is carried out in the Senate, with conviction upheld upon a two-thirds majority. The House is chaired by an officer called the Speaker of the House, who is generally a senior representative from the majority party in the House.\\
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Interestingly, unlike in parliamentary systems, the Speaker does not legally need to be a sitting representative or ever have been a representative at all, they just need to be any person that 50% + 1 of the House's members want to be speaker. In practice, though, no Congress has ever taken advantage of this potentially fun {{loophole|Abuse}}, and instead the Speaker is always some sort of party leader.[[note]]After Speaker John Boehner resigned in 2015, using this loophole was floated about; ultimately, though, Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan got the job.[[/note]] The Speaker is chosen at the beginning of each new Congress by a simple majority vote -- this vote is largely a formality, as any opposition is usually handled behind closed party doors between the election and the beginning of the new Congress, usually in the form of committee assignments and legislative priorities. For the century (1923-2023) between the drawn-out contests of Frederick H. Gillett (R-MA) and Kevin [=McCarthy=] (R-CA) the Speaker had been elected in a single ballot[[labelnote:*]]With Gillett being elected after nine ballots and [=McCarthy=] after ''fifteen'' respectively, the record being the 133 ballots cast over a period of two months in 1855-56 that eventually elected Nathaniel P. Banks (A-MA) Speaker[[/labelnote]]. In both cases, the deadlock was broken by major concessions to the holdouts from the eventual Speaker.\\
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Because no impeachment trial has ever successfully resulted in the conviction of a US president, the act is becoming seen as more of a symbolic gesture than anything else; because of how the Electoral College functions, no sitting president has had a supermajority of the ''opposing'' party in the Senate since [[UsefulNotes/JohnWilkesBooth the special case]] of Andrew Johnson, and even ''he'' wasn't convicted. If you want an image of how unlikely a conviction would be, imagine if ''you'' got put on trial for a crime and half of the jury was made of your best friends [[{{Metaphorgotten}} who also depend on you for re-election endorsements]]. UsefulNotes/RichardNixon did resign while a strongly Democratic Congress was moving impeachment proceedings against him for his role in the Watergate scandal, and it's widely agreed upon that enough Republicans would have crossed the aisle to impeach and convict him had he stayed. Tellingly, Watergate weakened Nixon enough to render him a ''PersonaNonGrata'' in American politics for years following his departure.\\
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The vice president officially chairs the Senate, but in practice they seldom do except on particularly auspicious occasions, and may not speak or vote except in case of an exact tie (which was the case for the first few months of 2001, when the Senate was divided 50 to 50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Dick Cheney as the tiebreaking vote, and became the case again after Kamala Harris was inaugurated as VP in 2021 with another 50-to-50 tie). Instead, the Senate is officially chaired by the ''president pro tempore'' (often shortened to "pro tem"), the senior-most senator of the majority caucus, though ''that'' senator typically defers that job to a junior senator as well, because the pres. pro tem tends to be at least an octogenarian with little stamina to run the assembly. The person chairing the Senate is always referred to as "Mr./Madam President" during sessions, regardless of actual rank. Informally, the reins of power in the Senate are wielded by the "Majority Leader" -- i.e., the senator who chairs the majority party's caucus -- typically a senior senator, though not quite as senior as the pro tem.\\
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Senate seniority, by the way, is a funny thing. There are two types: seniority in the general body, and seniority in terms of a state. Seniority is decided by length of tenure in the Senate, so a senator can be quite senior and still be the "junior senator" of a particular state. And yes, the senior senator of one state can be junior to the junior senator of another state. The most senior "junior senator" is Maria Cantwell of UsefulNotes/{{Washington|State}}, who took office in 2001; the most junior "senior senator" is Jon Ossoff of [[UsefulNotes/GeorgiaUSA Georgia]], who took office in 2021 on the same day as his state's junior senator Raphael Warnock, after they won runoff elections for both of the state's Senate seats held on the same day. Seniority among an incoming class -- i.e. a group of newly elected senators sworn in on the same day -- is determined by former service in order as senator, vice president, House member, cabinet secretary, governor, by state population as of the most recent census, and finally by the length of the term they were first elected to. So, if two senators from the same state were sworn in on the same day, neither with any prior governmental service, the senator elected to a full six-year term would be senior to the senator elected to finish a predecessor's term.[[note]]This is why Ossoff is senior to Warnock -- the former ran for a seat that was due to be contested, while the latter ran in a special election. The Democratic Party in Congress ranks Ossoff as senior to Warnock because of the comparative alphabetical positions of their names.[[/note]] Whew!\\
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Members of Congress, of either house, are often identified in the media with a hyphenated suffix that abbreviates their affiliation and state -- "D-CA", for example, indicates a Democrat from California, while "R-IN" would refer to a Republican from Indiana, and "[[TakeAThirdOption I-VT]]" would refer to UsefulNotes/BernieSanders from UsefulNotes/{{Vermont}}.\\
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For a bill to become law, it must pass by a simple majority in both houses and receive the president's signature. This is not nearly as simple as it sounds.\\
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The bill, having been drawn up in some subsidiary committee or other (and usually after tons of debate over its initial contents), is presented at-large to the congressional house from which it originated for a vote. If it passes the vote, it goes to the other house, which goes through the same process of debating and rewording the bill before voting on its own version of it. Next, if it passes this second vote, the two different versions of the bill are brought to the "Conference Committee" -- members of both houses who come together to have another round of debates and rewording to craft a single, compromised version of the bill. Once the Conference Committee has finalized the content and wording of the bill, the bill ''again'' goes back before each house for a secondary round of debate before its final votes. So, before the president can even say yes or no to a bill officially, it will have been drafted, debated, rewritten, added to, subtracted from, voted, folded, spindled, mutilated, re-debated, re-voted, and possibly used as a tea cozy.\\
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As an added bonus, either time during this process when a bill is in the Senate, a senator determined to block the passage of a bill (either to kill it outright, or, in the first round, to tie it up until certain changes are made to its content) can "filibuster" its vote by lodging endless procedural motions to delay a vote, or simply getting up and [[HoldingTheFloor talking for as long as possible]] until the bill's proponents get tired and go home, or (again, in the first round) concede to enough changes to its content that the filibuster is dropped. The record for a speech on the Senate floor is ''24 hours and 18 minutes''.[[note]]Strom Thurmond of UsefulNotes/SouthCarolina gave that speech against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.[[/note]] Indeed, it takes more votes to end debate and bring a bill to a final vote -- 60 votes, or three-fifths of the Senate -- than it does to pass the bill itself once it comes to a vote. Nowadays senators don't usually bother getting up and speaking for hours. If 41 can get together and express an intention to filibuster, then the threat alone is enough to stop the bill in its tracks. Scrapping the filibuster entirely -- the so-called "nuclear option" -- has been considered by various blocs over the years, though none has succeeded, partly because the majority party of the day has recognized that to do so would weaken their position when they become the minority party. A reform was passed in 2011 that made filibusters slightly more difficult to carry out, though time will tell what effect (if any) it has on Senate business.\\
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After all this, the president still has the power to "veto" a bill -- an official rejection which voids the bill, unless Congress can then successfully use its ''one'' opportunity to override the president's veto with a two-thirds majority in both houses. Overridden vetoes are somewhat rare, and were virtually non-existent for the first 90 years of the nation's history. However, if the president approves of the bill, he signs it, returns it to Congress for certification, and it becomes law.\\
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And then there's the confusing bit. You see, the president always has the option of simply not vetoing ''or'' signing the bill, rendering the idea of returning it to Congress for certification something of a moot point. What this signifies, however, depends on whether Congress is adjourned or not.\\
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If Congress is adjourned, the bill does not become law, there being no Congress in Washington to return the bill to. The president can -- and indeed usually does -- do this intentionally, and it's known as a "pocket veto."[[note]]Notionally, the president puts the bill in his pocket, or at least away, and forgets about it.[[/note]] It's extremely useful for presidents faced with a popular bill they don't want to sign, but can't be seen vetoing; this allows them to save face and say, "I didn't kill the bill; I merely let it die." The format is also immune to overrides, so if Congress ''really'' wants to pass the bill, they have to [[HereWeGoAgain go through the whole rigmarole]] ''[[HereWeGoAgain again]]''.\\
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If Congress is still in session (i.e., hasn't adjourned), the bill automatically becomes law. Why this is isn't clear. There's no formal name for this method, either (although "default enactment" has started to gain currency among scholars), but some civics teachers have been known to call it the "stuff-it-in-your-desk" route or "pocket enactment". A president can also use this strategically: a bill that would cause a huge uproar if it failed to become law, but which the president dislikes on principle, can go into the presidential desk. This allows him to say "I didn't sign the bill; I merely let it become law." This isn't used as often as the pocket veto, but the possibility did come up in late 2011.[[note]]Obama was faced with a defense appropriations bill that included a provision that explicitly authorized the Justice Department to detain American citizens accused of terrorism without charge. Obama thought that this was ridiculous and an offense to American values, but he couldn't be seen to be vetoing a defense appropriations bill--i.e. the bill that keeps the military supplied for the next year. In the end, he chose to sign the bill but include a signing statement--long story--saying that ''his'' administration would never actually detain anyone, but the fact remains that a default enactment was on the table and could have done the same thing.[[/note]]\\
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Because senators are elected by the entire population of each state, serve terms three times longer than representatives, and number the same from each state regardless of the size of the state's population, the Senate also tends to be more conservative and less radical than the House -- in other words, less subject to the changing whims of the people. This makes the Senate less partisan, less divisive, and more capable of passing important legislation. In a classic trade-off, it also makes senators less accountable to their constituents.\\
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Congress can also propose amendments to the Constitution, which must receive two-thirds majority in both houses and must then be approved by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. There is no limitation on the scope of what an amendment may do, except that no state's Senate representation may be reduced without its consent.[[note]]In theory, this is a meaningless limitation, as any amendment reducing a state's representation could also include a clause retracting the requirement for consent, though this has never actually been attempted or tested.[[/note]] Unless explicitly stated in the text of the bill proposing it, there is no time limit on ratification; the proposal that eventually became the 27th Amendment, for example, was first proposed shortly after the Constitutional Convention in 1789, and was fully ratified and enshrined in the Constitution in 1992, '''203 years later'''. The states also have the power to bypass Congress, and by the request of two-thirds of the state governments may call a Constitutional convention for proposing amendments, which upon approval by the convention must then be ratified in the normal fashion. To date, this has never occurred.\\
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Yes, the representation for which Americans fought in the Revolution is this: Essentially two committees, one representing the people and one representing the states, who must pass bills twice each just to send them to the president's desk. Pretty clever way to keep government busy in such a way that it can't get too self-important.\\
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The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court and the lesser federal courts established under it. For details beyond what you'll find below, see UsefulNotes/AmericanCourts.\\
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The Supreme Court (often called SCOTUS, from its full title of Supreme Court of the United States) consists of a number of judges called "justices", who are appointed by the president, subject to Senate confirmation, and who serve "during good behavior", which, barring conviction or impeachment, means a lifetime tenure. The number of Supreme Court justices is not set by the Constitution, but a tradition has developed in the last 60 some-odd years that nine is a good number. The President appoints the Supreme Court justices, albeit with the advice and consent of the Senate. Interestingly, Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to add judges to the Supreme Court, presuming they would be inclined to rule his way, and was talked out of it.[[note]]He wound up doing it by default anyway; since he was elected to four terms, by the time he died, he had appointed seven of the nine sitting justices ... though some of his appointees proved at least as likely to rule against his wishes.[[/note]] The court stuck at nine members then and has stayed there ever since.\\
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The Supreme Court is the ultimate body of appeal in U.S. law and is charged with the task of reviewing cases where the constitutionality of a law or governmental act is in question. If a law is deemed "unconstitutional" -- that is, contradictory to the letter or spirit of the Constitution -- the Court has the power to declare it null and void by a majority vote of justices. The Court also has the power to settle disputes between the states themselves, but these cases only make up a small minority of cases (one or two per term, at the most). The Court is also the highest level of appeal for all issues of federal law even when constitutionality is not a issue.\\
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Interestingly, the one thing that most people assume the Supreme Court is supposed to do -- "interpret" the Constitution -- is ''not'' stated by the Constitution. Life rarely being that simple, SCOTUS gradually got in the habit of doing exactly that, and by the time most people noticed, it was a ''fait accompli''.\\
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Together, these make the Supreme Court very powerful indeed.\\
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The Court is led by the Chief Justice (currently John Roberts, appointed by George W. Bush in 2005), a position that has the duties of chairing any meeting of the Court for both selection of cases to review and ruling on said cases. However, he or she does not have more power in any actual vote, although they ''do'' have a cooler robe. The Chief Justice also has the constitutional duty of presiding over any impeachments of the President or Vice President (but not other officers), and traditionally administers the Oath of Office to new presidents and Supreme Court justices (including his or her successor) unless unavailable (UsefulNotes/CalvinCoolidge was sworn in by his father, a notary public, after learning of UsefulNotes/WarrenGHarding's death, and UsefulNotes/LyndonJohnson was sworn in by a federal district court judge, on-board UsefulNotes/AirForceOne in Dallas, shortly after Kennedy's assassination). The Chief Justice is also administrator of the Federal Court System, making the position the technical equivalent of a cabinet secretary. UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft is the only person to have ever served both as President and as Chief Justice.[[note]]He wanted to be the latter all his life. UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt had handpicked him as his successor from the Republican Party when he stood down for the 1908 presidential election and he went on to serve one full term. When Harding had the opportunity to nominate a new chief justice just after being inaugurated in 1921, he chose Taft.[[/note]]\\
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"Good behavior" is the only constitutional requirement for a justice, so the office is theoretically open to anyone whom the president may choose to nominate. ''Most'' nominees tend to be federal judges, but approximately one-third of all historical justices (including former Chief Justices Warren and Rehnquist and current justice Elena Kagan) had never sat on the bench prior to their nomination.\\
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In short, this committee tries to make sense of the output of the other two committees. They have a tougher rule to follow, in that they cannot "tie" on an issue, no matter how much they try to (the [[DecidedByOneVote 5–4 Court vote]] is one of the most dreaded things in American politics). Since a justice might be absent from a case due to illness or he "recuses" (removes) himself because of a conflict of interest (it is up to the justice themselves to decide if they wish to recuse themselves) it is possible to have a 4–4 tie. Since almost every case before the court is an appeal, in case of a tie, the decision of the court below the Supreme Court is upheld, although the lower court decision is binding only within the jurisdiction of the lower court. (And before you think that this is just an amusing little fact, realize that the already controversial ''Citizens United v. FEC'' decision has become even more controversial due to this.)\\
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On the plus side (for them), legally the only person that can overrule the Court decision is a later Court Decision or Constitutional amendment.[[note]]Or, in the case of statutory interpretation cases (the main bulk of the Court's caseload), Congress amending the statute.[[/note]] These tend not to be common; the Court has a policy of not overruling past decisions unless the circumstances have ''massively'' changed, and amendments to the constitution are even rarer.\\
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Still with us? This is the committee that is meant to simplify things.\\
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The Supreme Court is theoretically an apolitical body, though more often than not presidents will appoint a judge whose political opinions agree with their own.[[note]]Likewise, justices prefer to retire when a like-minded president is in office to keep the balance of power from shifting too far to their opponents' side. This kicked up a firestorm in 2016 after the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia, with the GOP-controlled Senate refusing point blank even to ''consider'' an Obama nominee and holding out for a Republican president to be inaugurated in 2017. It didn't help that several major decisions were outstanding. Obama responded by researching nominees anyway, ultimately nominating Merrick "[[MetaphorIsMyMiddleName My Middle Name Is Moderate]]" Garland, an unimpeachably honorable and thoroughly centrist judge whom Republicans themselves had previously cited as an excellent pick for the Court. Garland's nomination was ultimately blocked and Obama's successor, UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump, got to fill Scalia's seat with conservative Neil Gorsuch.[[/note]] Of course, it's hard to tell how a justice will rule once on the bench -- David Souter, a justice appointed by UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush, was commonly considered one of the more liberal-minded justices, and Chief Justice John Roberts, usually a solidly conservative judge, famously crossed the bench and voted to uphold Barack Obama's healthcare reform act. At present, six of the nine justices on the bench were appointed by Republican presidents, and the other three by Democratic presidents. Of the nine, six are typically considered "conservative" and three "liberal". The fact that justices serve for life means that they, unlike Congress and the president, are free to issue rulings purely based on their own judgment and conscience, without worrying about the whims of public opinion, party support, or reelection. Supreme Court justices theoretically can be impeached; however, this has only occurred once, in the very early days of the Republic, and the justice in question was acquitted.\\
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There are, at present, 50 states in the Union. Kentucky, UsefulNotes/{{Massachusetts}}, UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Virginia}} are called Commonwealths in their full names, but are still states. There are also the Commonwealth of UsefulNotes/PuertoRico and the Commonwealth of the UsefulNotes/NorthernMarianaIslands, which are possessions of the United States and not states at all. Clear as mud so far? Good, because it gets muddier and more interesting as we go along.\\
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Each state is required by the U.S. Constitution to guarantee its citizens a "Republican form of government". That basically means that they are bound by the Constitution to provide a system based on laws, with elected officials serving as management, not rulers. It probably also means that states are forbidden from having democratic constitutional monarchies, but no state has ever tried that issue. Most state governments are identical in their structure and function to the federal government, just on a smaller scale. Nebraska has a single-house legislature; the other 49 mimic the federal government, although some states have a Senate and an Assembly instead of a House of Representatives (and due to unique circumstances of history, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland each have a House of ''Delegates''). The chief executive of a state is called a governor, whose resemblance to the president also varies;[[note]]For example, until 1996, the governor of North Carolina did not have the power to veto laws (pre-Revolutionary UsefulNotes/NorthCarolina had some mildly traumatizing royal governors).[[/note]] their deputy, who may or may not be elected on the same ticket, is called a lieutenant governor. This does not, however, apply to UsefulNotes/{{Arizona}}, UsefulNotes/{{Wyoming}}, and UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}}, which have no lieutenant governor. There, when the governor has either resigned or been impeached, the elected official who is technically the chief clerk of the state, the Secretary of State, becomes governor.\\
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Nearly all 50 states have an elected chief clerk who is called the Secretary of State, who, because that is an elected official, is not considered a cabinet secretary à la the other cabinet departments of the Governor's Cabinet. As noted above, in most states, the Secretary of State of that state is the third in line to become governor after the Lieutenant Governor. Note that while each ''state'' has a Secretary of State, this should not be confused with the head of the U.S. State Department, who is also called the Secretary of State. The one who runs the State Department in Washington (in the area of D.C. called ''Foggy Bottom'') deals with the relationships between the United States and other countries, while each ''state's'' Secretary of State deals with the operations of that particular state, and is mainly responsible for overseeing elections in the state. Nice and confusing, isn't it?\\
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New states may be admitted to the Union upon congressional approval. States may not raise their own armies (they are required by law to maintain an organized militia in the form of the Army and Air National Guards, and may raise an optional militia for in-state use only), sign treaties (but with permission of Congress they may enter into a ''Compact'' with other states), or coin money on their own, and when a conflict between state and federal law arises, federal law wins out. Except when it doesn't. Basically, federal law only has supremacy when it is constitutional. Familiar with the phrase, "Can open, worms all over the ground"? Well, when THAT argument comes up, things get wormy.\\
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One major difference between the state and federal governments is that states hold a lot more elections. A state need not limit its elections to the legislature and the chief executive, as the federal government does; they can also hold elections for secretary of state, attorney general, comptroller, state supreme court judges, judges of lower courts, district attorneys, sheriffs, and/or dog catchers. Much of this will be specified in the state constitution, which is generally amended by popular vote as well. Many states also have a procedure where an elected official may be removed (recalled) from office in a special election if enough petitions are gathered. A significant example of this occurred in 2003, when California governor Gray Davis was successfully recalled and replaced by Creator/ArnoldSchwarzenegger in a special election that included 135 candidates[[note]]Among whom were several odd personalities, including Gary Coleman, the former Commissioner of UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball, and a porn star.[[/note]] for the office. In 2012, an attempt to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was defeated, making Gov. Walker the first governor in American history to survive a recall attempt (and only the third to be recalled). In 2021, California governor UsefulNotes/GavinNewsom became the second one to defeat a recall attempt by a ''hefty margin''.\\
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All this voting theoretically makes state governments more accountable to the people. In practice, this doesn't quite work. This is why in some states you have Initiative and Referendum, where, if the legislature doesn't pass an acceptable law, the people can propose one (meaning some sufficiently well-funded and/or ticked-off group sends out people to collect signatures to have a ballot proposal put up for election), contrary to the Jefferson quote above. This is how the famous ''Proposition 13'' slashed property taxes in California. It's also how a major manufacturer of gambling equipment and supplies could get a state lottery created there as well.\\
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The Constitution says nothing about government below the state level, so states are free to set up whatever structure they like. There's a lot of variation from state to state here (Connecticut and Massachusetts have county governments in name only, while Hawaii has no municipal governments), so this is just a general overview.\\
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Forty-eight of the 50 states are divided into counties. The exceptions: Louisiana is divided into "parishes" owing to its unique legal descendance from French civil law, which are identical to counties in all but name. Alaska is divided into "boroughs", which ''are'' a bit different from counties, but not enough so to matter for our purposes. Connecticut's eight counties still exist, but are no longer recognized by the federal government as statistical entities; these were officially replaced in 2022 by the state's nine "planning districts", which were established in the 1980s as a response to problems arising from the state's 1960 abolition of county government. County governments are usually headed by a "Board of Supervisors" or "Board of Commissioners" or the like, and may have a "County Executive" overseeing the executive departments.\\
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In addition to these, four states have so-called "independent cities", which are cities that do not have a county government at all and deal directly with their state government. These can be found in Maryland (UsefulNotes/{{Baltimore}}), Missouri (UsefulNotes/StLouis), UsefulNotes/{{Nevada}} (Carson City), and UsefulNotes/{{Virginia}} (a total of 38). Under Virginia's constitution, any community that is incorporated as a "city" is completely separate from any county--even though a fair number of these communities also serve as county seats, as they were chosen as seats before seceding from the county.[[note]]For example, Charlottesville, home to the University of Virginia, is both an independent city and the seat of surrounding Albemarle County, located ''within'' and surrounded by the county, but not belonging to it.[[/note]] Several communities in the South Hampton Roads metro area of southeast Virginia are independent cities formed from former counties; Virginia Beach and Norfolk were formerly located in Princess Anne and Norfolk counties until the voters approved referendums with the independent city of Virginia Beach emerging from its consolidation with Princess Anne County, while Norfolk County became the independent cities of Norfolk and Chesapeake. This differs from cases such as UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}}, and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, in which the city and county (or, in the case of New Orleans, parish) both nominally exist even though the governments are merged. This also differs from the unique case of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, where each of its five boroughs functions as its own county; this is perhaps the only example of a city made up of counties, rather than the reverse.\\
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Size doesn't matter, nor does population. The least populous county is in the second largest state, Loving County, Texas, and at last count had 64 people. UsefulNotes/LosAngeles County in California, the most populous in the country, has nearly 10 million people, making it more populous than all but eight entire states in the U.S. Number doesn't matter: Texas has 254 counties, Delaware has three. Some states have laws that set minimum sizes on counties, or prohibit adding more counties. The smallest county is Arlington County, Virginia at 26 square miles; the smallest county-equivalent unit by area is the city of Falls Church, Virginia, at a hair over two square miles. The largest (aside from the UsefulNotes/{{Alaska}}n boroughs) is California's San Bernardino County, which is bigger than each of the nine smallest states (Maryland, UsefulNotes/{{Hawaii}}, UsefulNotes/{{Massachusetts}}, UsefulNotes/{{Vermont}}, New Hampshire, UsefulNotes/NewJersey, Connecticut, Delaware, UsefulNotes/RhodeIsland).\\
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For an example of comparisons, the states of Iowa (56 thousand square miles/2.9 million people), Kansas (82k/2.6m), UsefulNotes/{{Oklahoma|USA}} (69k/3.5m), Nebraska (77k/1.7m), UsefulNotes/{{Minnesota}} (87k/4.9m), and UsefulNotes/{{Colorado}} (104k/4.3m) as a region have over 476,000 square miles and 19.9 million people. But this entire region obviously deserves considerably less attention and less resources than UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, which has 468 square miles and 18.8 million people, even though New York has 1/1000 of the area and fewer people.\\
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Municipal government can take various forms; depending on the state, municipalities can be called "cities", "towns", "villages", "townships", "boroughs", or something else, which may or may not have different meanings or governmental structures. A "town" is usually the smallest type of government, but there can be towns that have larger populations than some cities. Larger cities usually have their executive power vested in an elected mayor, with the city council (also elected) having legislative power over local ordinances. Many cities and towns tend to use a "city-manager" system, in which the city council appoints a professional urban planner to run the executive departments, and the office of mayor is either nonexistent, ceremonial, or a glorified city councilor.\\
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The services provided by counties and cities overlap a lot (the police/sheriff's department, fire department, transportation, parks, etc.) and the precise arrangement varies from state to state, and sometimes within states as well. If there are any areas outside municipal governments, the county will provide all services there. In some states, mostly in the Northeast, cities and towns cover the entire state; this is how Connecticut and Rhode Island get away with not having any counties at all; today, their counties are merely geographic subdivisions.\\
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Cities can be combined with a county (like UsefulNotes/{{Denver}} and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco), cross county lines (like [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas, in five different counties]]), exist outside any county (like Baltimore, St. Louis, and all 38 "cities" in Virginia), or take up entire counties and merge with the county governments (UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}}, Tennessee with Davidson County; Louisville, Kentucky with Jefferson County; and Carson City, Nevada with the former Ormsby County).[[note]]UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity's five boroughs are five separate counties, none of which has an independent government.[[/note]] Many metropolitan areas cross state boundaries, but cities are always in the same state (UsefulNotes/KansasCity, Missouri/Kansas is actually two separate cities, and UsefulNotes/{{Portland}}, Oregon forms a coterminous metropolitan area with Vancouver, Washington).\\
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There are also [[UsefulNotes/AmericanEducationalSystem elected school boards]] that operate local schools independent of any government in much of the country, as well as independent Fire Department districts, waste management departments, parks and recreation bureaus, and other special districts or government corporations providing services, but describing them all would make this article even more complicated than it is.\\
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The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with the intent of creating a state free from the influence of factions. In this they failed, as parties began forming while the ink was still wet on the parchment, arguing over whether the federal government or individual states should have the greater power. Though parties have less ''official'' influence than they do in most countries, they still hold an immense amount of sway in the government, largely due to the funding they can collect for candidates who agree with their policies.\\
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These definitions apply to the current time; the ideologies of both parties have been extremely fluid and really only coalesced into firmly partisan lines in the latter half of the twentieth century. The original iterations of the parties are almost completely unrecognizable from today's versions; an astute observer of American politics in 1920 would probably be dumbfounded by the elections of 2020. For example, Vermont is, historically, one of the most reliably Republican states in the country, to the extent ''Film/WhiteChristmas'' even joked about it. It's now arguably the bluest state in the country and votes for Democrats by massive margins. West Virginia and Kentucky used to be redoubts of blue collar Democratic strength, and now Democrats are persona non grata in those two states ([[HereditaryRepublic unless you happen to be named "Beshear" or "Manchin"]]). Historically, the nation's rich, well-educated suburbs were Republican strongholds -- Orange County, California was basically the birthplace of American conservatism; Johnson County, Kansas was once called "The Most Republican Place in America"; and the suburbs north of Atlanta produced Newt Gingrich, the arch-conservative Speaker of the House. Fast forward to 2020, and Democrat Joe Biden won all three locations by significant margins. All of which is a long way of saying that nothing about American politics is etched in stone -- political coalitions shift and evolve, and you can't take for granted that in 20 years the electoral map (or even the parties themselves) will look the same as it does today.\\
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A total history of party realignment is beyond the scope of this page, but we'll do the best to sum it up briefly. The Democrats started out in 1828 as followers of UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson and generally aligned themselves as supporters of states' rights, a smaller federal government with a strong executive branch, and slavery, because those aligned with his agenda; these are essentially the exact ''opposite'' of modern Democrat principles, and you would be hard pressed to find a Democrat today who sees Jackson in a good light. The Republicans came along in 1854 as a coalition of various groups whose only real uniting factor was opposition to slavery, which means Republicans today are much less shy about claiming credit for their past.\\
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From the Civil War until shortly before UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, both parties were a hodgepodge of different groups and ideologies and had left and right wings. The Republicans were established from the remains of the mildly leftish Whig Party and were originally a coalition between industrial interests, left-wing moral reformers, and black Southerners who viewed the GOP as the "party of [[UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln Lincoln]]", while the Democrats used to be a coalition between Northern labor and white ethnic communities on one hand and white landowners and former slaveholders in the South on the other, the latter ''also'' [[StillFightingTheCivilWar viewing the GOP as the "party of Lincoln"]]. During the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Democrats were further split into War Democrats and Peace Democrats ("Copperheads"), while the Radical Republicans were a faction that opposed Lincoln and the moderate Republicans, favoring strong punitive measures against the rebellious Southern states and pushing for immediate abolition of slavery as opposed to Lincoln and company's cautious approach.\\
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UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's "New Deal coalition" during TheGreatDepression pulled progressives into the Democratic fold and also saw the party start making inroads into the African American community, culminating in the party putting civil rights as one of its platforms in TheSixties and passing several Civil Rights Acts. This led to Democrats losing much of their pro-segregation white Southern support -- and several legislators, who briefly [[StartMyOwn started their own parties]] before joining the Republicans. Nixon and Reagan both campaigned with at least an eye to picking up disillusioned Southern voters, though the Democrats established a virtual lock on the African American vote because ''they'' were disillusioned by the Republican "Southern Strategy". The ideology-based party layout described above largely crystallized by TheEighties, though just ''how'' progressive or conservative individual members of either party are can vary and still lead to some party infighting and occasional aisle-crossing.\\
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Both major parties tend to have their own core of rich and elite constituencies and support from industries that provide much of the financial backing for each, though each party also usually exaggerates the degree to which its opponent is the "party of [insert industry here]." The Republicans tend to garner support from small- to medium-sized business owners, oil/gas and manufacturing corporations, construction and contracting businesses, and most of the financial sector--groups that generally benefit from lower taxes and fewer regulations. The Democrats, meanwhile, are supported by lawyers and law firms, entertainment and technology companies (i.e., Hollywood and Silicon Valley), [[UsefulNotes/AmericanEducationalSystem higher education]], K–12 public school teachers, labor unions, and a smaller share of the financial industry--groups that tend to benefit from greater government aid and contracting. These interests are by no means exclusive, however, and most major industries and corporations tend to spread campaign contributions around, typically to incumbents, because they want to avoid angering either side and thus curry favor with whoever might be in office at the time. The influence of campaign money in politics is a very controversial issue in the United States, especially after the 2010 ''Citizens United v. FEC'' Supreme Court decision.\\
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Geography is ''very'' important for understanding party lines as they currently stand. The South tends to be conservative, the Northeast and Pacific West liberal, and the Rocky Mountain West and the Midwest somewhere in the middle. Today, and especially before about 1964, a UsefulNotes/{{Maine}} Republican might be expected to be more liberal than a Mississippi Democrat. Region even helps explain the parties' ideological realignment, as best seen in the political history of the American South described above that explains how the "party of Lincoln" now has its strongest regional base in the South. On a more local level, one of the quickest ways to determine how someone likely votes is whether they live in an urban or rural environment: cities tend to attract and employ those who are most likely to align with liberal causes while rural communities tend to align more with conservatives. Once again, these are all ''broad'' generalizations, but they are useful heuristics for explaining (a) why land-based electoral maps often appear overwhelmingly red even when Democrats win majorities,[[note]]Rural land dominated by conservatives takes up much more physical space despite being sparsely populated.[[/note]] (b) why Republicans do so much better in state and local elections,[[note]]The representatives of said sparsely populated states/districts often have equal voting power to those representing more populous urban regions.[[/note]] and (c) why suburbs are so hotly contested as electoral battlegrounds.\\
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It's important to note that the American definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative' are rather different from how the terms are used in most of the rest of the world. In most societies, a liberal favors letting events take their course unimpeded by government control, while a conservative wants government to maintain the status quo through laws and regulations. In the US, however, these meanings are shifted, particularly on economic matters -- it is conservatives (Republicans) who favor less regulation, while liberals (Democrats) call for fair markets and consumer protection through federal action. (Again, these are ''huge'' generalizations.) On social and moral issues, it's even more complicated -- generally, extremists on ''both'' ends tend to favor government policies that enforce their values and restrict (or outright prohibit) behavior they disapprove of, while moderates, who make up the vast majority of the American populace, would rather they all just shut up about it.\\
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Also, note the unofficial colors of the two parties. In most of the Western world, the color red is used for left-wing parties (red having traditionally been the color of UsefulNotes/{{socialism}}), while blue was given to right-wing parties. In America, however, this is reversed -- the center-left (by American standards) Democrats have blue as their color, while the center-right Republicans are red (though both their logos make use of both colors, said colors being a prominent part of Old Glory). The terms "red states" and "blue states" stem from this dichotomy, and was born during a confluence of coincidences during the 2000 presidential election.[[note]]If you really want the whole story: On Election Night, a map of the United States is displayed and as each state gets called for a winner, it is colored in. Since the colors of America are red, white, and blue, and the uncolored (and therefore blank) states work as white, red and blue were used to color in the states. Through the year 2000, the colors were distributed to the Republicans and Democrats almost entirely at random. It ''just so happened'' that in the 2000 elections, which were heavily disputed and the outcome of which remained in doubt for weeks, the Republicans had gotten red and the Democrats blue. Since that map was displayed so frequently and discussed so often, the colors were indelibly linked to each party in the public's mind.[[/note]]\\
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* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement Tea Party]]''', despite its name, was not a political party ''per se'', but rather was a right-wing populist movement centered in the Republican Party. It was primarily composed of conservative, Christian, nationalist, middle-class citizens, and it had its genesis in early 2009, when CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli went on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-Jw-5Kx8k a rant]] on the floor of the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} Mercantile Exchange attacking UsefulNotes/BarackObama's bailout of homeowners facing foreclosure. Some would argue it started with UsefulNotes/RonPaul's presidential campaign in 2007–08, but although he had a faction in the Tea Party, the majority were closer to mainline conservative Republican ideology than the anti-interventionist, staunch libertarian Paul. Their name is a reference to the UsefulNotes/{{Boston}} Tea Party, one of many protests by colonial Americans against the Tea Act passed by the British Parliament in 1773.\\\

As of 2023, there are only three members of Congress who are not Democrats or Republicans, all of whom are senators. The first and most famous is UsefulNotes/BernieSanders, a senator from Vermont who identifies himself as a socialist (he's really more a European-style social democrat stuck in the more right-wing U.S.), campaigns as an independent but for all intents and purposes caucuses ("hangs out") with the Democrats.[[note]]He is the longest-serving federal officeholder in American history who has served continuously as an independent, being Vermont's congressman from 1991 to 2007, then winning its 2006 Senate election and two more since.[[/note]] He registered as a Democrat in 2015 to run in their 2016 and 2020 presidential primaries. The second is Angus King of Maine, who was twice elected governor of Maine as an independent and subsequently was elected to the Senate in a three-way race in 2012 where he defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates; he also caucuses with the Democrats. The third is Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who was elected as a Democrat but left the party in 2022 and became an independent, but aligns with Democrats on most party-line votes. Some moderate officeholders, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have run third-party campaigns after losing their primary elections, won their seats, and rejoined their original party. Some recent legislators like former Michigan representative Justin Amash have defected from their parties and registered as independent (or, in his case, Libertarian) for the rest of their term, but this is typically [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere the last action of a disillusioned idealist]]; few have ever run for re-election after doing so.\\
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No third party candidate has ever been elected president. Even when the Republican Party won its first presidential election with Abraham Lincoln in 1860, it was already one of the top two parties going into the election year, having essentially replaced the Whigs. However, there have been several third party candidacies with a sizable impact on the two-party race-- which is to say, backlash on the third-party voters' second choice. This is known as the "spoiler" effect, most recently observed when Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate in 1992, received 19% of the popular vote and split conservatives, and in 2000, where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's showing of 2% was considered one of the factors that tipped the scales in UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's favor in UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}. Also, UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, U.S. president from 1901 to 1909 under the Republican Party, became disillusioned with the less progressive political standing of his successor, Taft, who was also from the GOP. Thus, TR formed the Bull Moose Party and ran for re-election in 1912, where he won 88 electoral votes, which was far from a majority but the most a third party has won since the ubiquity of the Democratic and Republican Parties.\\
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While the modern third parties have not been very successful at winning elections on the federal level, they're often very effective at being 'protest' votes: if a usually-Democratic voter feels that their Democratic Party's candidate for (say) state house is too conservative on issues such as environmental protection or health care, that voter can vote for the Green Party in protest of that candidate. This weakens the candidate's base and increases the possibility that the Republican opponent can win the seat. The next time around, the Democratic Party or the Democratic candidate are likelier to heed the whims of their constituents and will adjust their stance on those above issues accordingly. It sounds like a roundabout method, but it can be pretty effective ''if'' one isn't afraid of the other party taking control for a bit.\\
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Most elections in America use a first-past-the-post voting system-- each voter casts one vote and the candidate/option with the most votes is the winner, even if a majority did not vote for it. Quick example: In an election between A, B, and C, A gets 45%, B gets 35%, and C gets 20%. A wins, even though 55% of the electorate voted against them. If it seems to you that the B and C supporters should have teamed up and pooled their votes rather than splitting them, congratulations-- you've just discovered why America has only two major political parties. Using political science, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law it can be shown]] that plurality elections tend to lead to two-party systems, which is exactly what happened in America.[[note]]Ironically, the Electoral College actually ''does'' require a majority vote when they vote for the president, though the fact their votes are decided by state-level plurality elections means this doesn't come up; even when Ross Perot won one-fifth of the popular vote in 1992 on a third party platform, he didn't win even a single state. The one time it ''did'' happen was in 1824, when four Democratic-Republicans all ran against each other, the subsequent vote went to the House, and the scenario presented above essentially happened; one candidate threw in with another, and the candidate who won the plurality lost out.[[/note]] "Jungle primaries" (see below) mitigate the effect of such spoiler candidates by reducing the options to two for the final round, so the winner has to get a majority over ''somebody'' at least. Elections in Maine go a step further with ranked-choice voting (specifically instant-runoff voting), also found in a number of cities (such as UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco) and, in slight variation, statewide races in Alaska. Calls for the implementation of that alternative voting system are present elsewhere, so Maine and Alaska may not be the last to make the reform.\\
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The majority of elections for office are a competition between two major candidates, one Republican and one Democrat. How each party picks their candidate is totally up to them (except in the few states that use "jungle" primary rules -- notably Louisiana, California, and Washington. In "jungle" primaries, candidates from all parties run against each other in a general election, and if no candidate achieves a majority, the top two contenders face each other in a run-off. California and Washington primaries use the top-two variant: even if one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates move on to the runoff.) Every state has laws which regulate this practice, but [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem the parties themselves write the laws, so they can choose whatever they want]].\\
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For example, the Democratic Party had a primary election in 2008 to choose their candidate for president, of whom UsefulNotes/BarackObama and UsefulNotes/HillaryRodhamClinton were the last two hopefuls standing. One might think that the party would simply have all members vote for who they want and which ever one gets the most votes would win. This is not how it works. The unelected leaders of the Democratic Party can choose any method they want to decide who their candidate is. The current method involves having the vote of the members choose most of the "delegates" (who themselves are chosen by the party), while the remaining delegates are high-ranking party members ("superdelegates"). Depending on state law and state party rules, the delegates who were voted for might or might not be required to support the candidate they were elected to.[[note]]The logic behind this system is that the appointed "superdelegates" may be able to influence the nomination if a candidate does something monumentally stupid or embarrassing after the popular votes have been cast. Absent such an event, superdelegates generally vote with the national plurality.[[/note]]\\
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Just to mention, the Republican Party's rules are roughly the same as far as this goes. The main differences are that they make far less use of caucuses and allocate delegates by winner-takes-all or by congressional district for many states, not proportionally to popular vote, and do not use the "superdelegate" system: all of these factored into Donald Trump being able to run his successful primary campaign. There was once a time when Democrats didn't use superdelegates either, but after UsefulNotes/GeorgeMcGovern's disastrous run in 1972 -- in which he picked Thomas Eagleton, who proved to have had psychiatric issues in the past (as well as later having been found to have anonymously made some controversial remarks about [=McGovern=] to the press), as his running mate -- and UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter's loss to UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan in 1980, they added this feature as a safeguard.\\
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* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_(United_States) Reform Party]]''' was a centrist populist third party established after Texas billionaire Ross Perot's 1992 independent presidential run, in which he won 19% of the popular vote and became the first presidential campaign since 1912 that was seen as having been capable of winning the election. Perot first ran under the Reform Party banner for president in 1996 and won 8% of the vote. The Reform Party had its greatest success in 1998 when Wrestling/JesseVentura was elected governor of Minnesota. The party was founded on Perot's signature campaign issues of reducing the federal deficit and national debt, but soon fell prey to infighting between three groups: the "old guard" Perot faction, the libertarian Ventura faction, and the Christian conservative wing led by conservative pundit Pat Buchanan, a former Republican who had worked for the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. The party collapsed after it nominated Buchanan for president in 2000 and he won only 0.4% of the vote. While there is still a national organization, the party no longer meaningfully exists as a national entity.

No third party candidate has ever been elected president. Even when the Republican Party won its first presidential election with Abraham Lincoln in 1860, it was already one of the top two parties going into the election year, having essentially replaced the Whigs. However, there have been several third party candidacies with a sizable impact on the two-party race -- which is to say, backlash on the third-party voters' second choice. This is known as the "spoiler" effect, most recently observed when Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate in 1992, received 19% of the popular vote and split conservatives, and in 2000, where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's showing of 2% was considered one of the factors that tipped the scales in UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's favor in UsefulNotes/{{Florida}}. Also, UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt, U.S. president from 1901 to 1909 under the Republican Party, became disillusioned with the less progressive political standing of his successor, Taft, who was also from the GOP. Thus, TR formed the Bull Moose Party and ran for re-election in 1912, where he won 88 electoral votes, which was far from a majority but the most a third party has won since the ubiquity of the Democratic and Republican Parties.\\

While the modern third parties have not been very successful at winning elections on the federal level, they're often very effective at being 'protest' votes: if a usually-Democratic voter feels that their Democratic Party's candidate for, let's say state house, is too conservative on issues such as environmental protection or health care, that voter can vote for the Green Party in protest of that candidate. This weakens the candidate's base and increases the possibility that the Republican opponent can win the seat. The next time around, the Democratic Party or the Democratic candidate are likelier to heed the whims of their constituents and will adjust their stance on those above issues accordingly. It sounds like a roundabout method, but it can be pretty effective ''if'' one isn't afraid of the other party taking control for a bit.\\

Most elections in America use a first-past-the-post voting system -- each voter casts one vote and the candidate/option with the most votes is the winner, even if a majority did not vote for it. Quick example: In an election between A, B, and C, A gets 45%, B gets 35%, and C gets 20%. A wins, even though 55% of the electorate voted against them. If it seems to you that the B and C supporters should have teamed up and pooled their votes rather than splitting them, congratulations -- you've just discovered why America has only two major political parties. Using political science, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law it can be shown]] that plurality elections tend to lead to two-party systems, which is exactly what happened in America.[[note]]Ironically, the Electoral College actually ''does'' require a majority vote when they vote for the president, though the fact their votes are decided by state-level plurality elections means this doesn't come up; even when Ross Perot won one-fifth of the popular vote in 1992 on a third party platform, he didn't win even a single state. The one time it ''did'' happen was in 1824, when four Democratic-Republicans all ran against each other, the subsequent vote went to the House, and the scenario presented above essentially happened; one candidate threw in with another, and the candidate who won the plurality lost out.[[/note]] "Jungle primaries" (see below) mitigate the effect of such spoiler candidates by reducing the options to two for the final round, so the winner has to get a majority over ''somebody'' at least. Elections in Maine go a step further with ranked-choice voting (specifically instant-runoff voting), also found in a number of cities (such as UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco) and, in slight variation, statewide races in Alaska. Calls for the implementation of that alternative voting system are present elsewhere, so Maine and Alaska may not be the last to make the reform.\\

Since the United States is a republic, you will occasionally find people trying to tell you that the United States "is not a democracy". This is ''debatably'' true, since a republic and a democracy are technically two different forms of government, but a republic can still use democratic processes. So ask the person saying this what they mean before nodding sagely. The essential issue here is that the founders thought direct democracy (à la, say, [[UsefulNotes/AncientGreece ancient Athens]]) [[DemocracyIsBad was a generally bad idea]]. For example, UsefulNotes/ThomasJefferson claimed ''"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."'' More colloquially: "Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on dinner." That said, direct democracy does in fact exist on smaller levels in the United States, namely the "town meeting" form of government often practiced in the New England states, in which citizens may show up to vote directly on town laws and ordinances, as well as poll-style voting utilized in some states to vote on specific laws (signs reading "Vote YES/NO on Prop. 47" or something similar will often be ubiquitous in such states come election season). The debate over to what extent the government should engage in majority-ruled democracy or function as a democratic republic, or whether ultimate authority should rest with a strong centralized government (federalism) or with the individual state (anti-federalism/confederacy) predates the existence of the country itself, and is still debated today, with citizens, politicians, and pundits alike jumping from one side to the other (depending on which would result in their side of an issue winning).\\

As of 2023, there are only three federal officeholders who are not Democrats or Republicans, all of whom are senators. The first and most famous is UsefulNotes/BernieSanders, a senator from Vermont who identifies himself as a socialist (he's really more a European-style social democrat stuck in the more right-wing U.S.), campaigns as an independent but for all intents and purposes caucuses ("hangs out") with the Democrats.[[note]]He is the longest-serving federal officeholder in American history who has served continuously as an independent, being Vermont's congressman from 1991 to 2007, then winning its 2006 Senate election and two more since.[[/note]] He registered as a Democrat in 2015 to run in their 2016 and 2020 presidential primaries. The second is Angus King of Maine, who was twice elected governor of Maine as an independent and subsequently was elected to the Senate in a three-way race in 2012 where he defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates; he also caucuses with the Democrats. The third is Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who was elected as a Democrat but left the party in 2022 and became an independent, but aligns with Democrats on most party-line votes. Some moderate officeholders, like Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have run third-party campaigns after losing their primary elections, won their seats, and rejoined their original party. Some recent legislators like former Michigan representative Justin Amash have defected from their parties and registered as independent (or, in his case, Libertarian) for the rest of their term, but this is typically [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere the last action of a disillusioned idealist]]; few have ever run for re-election after doing so.\\

Currently, there are only two federal officeholders elected on third-party tickets, both senators. The first and most famous is UsefulNotes/BernieSanders, a senator from Vermont who identifies himself as a socialist (he's really more a European-style social democrat stuck in the more right-wing U.S.), campaigns as an independent but for all intents and purposes caucuses ("hangs out") with the Democrats.[[note]]He is the longest-serving federal officeholder in American history who has served continuously as an independent, being Vermont's congressman from 1991 to 2007, then winning its 2006 Senate election and two more since.[[/note]] He officially registered as a Democrat in 2015 to run in their 2016 and 2020 presidential primary. The second is Angus King of Maine, who was twice elected governor of Maine as an independent and subsequently was elected to the Senate in a three-way race in 2012 where he defeated the Republican and Democratic candidates; he also caucuses with the Democrats. Some moderate officeholders, like Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have run third-party campaigns after losing their primary elections, won their seats, and rejoined their original party. Some recent legislators like former Michigan representative Justin Amash have defected from their parties and registered as independent (or, in his case, Libertarian) for the rest of their term, but this is typically [[ScrewThisImOutOfHere the last action of a disillusioned idealist]]; few have ever run for re-election after doing so.\\

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Independent_Party American Independent Party]]''', another segregationist splinter from the Democrats, this time from 1968 and led by Alabama Governor George Wallace. The American Independents won 13.5% of the popular vote, 46 electoral votes and five Southern states. The success of Wallace's candidacy, combined with UsefulNotes/RichardNixon's "Southern strategy," marked the end of the once-Democratic "Solid South," which felt that the Democrats had betrayed the principles of white supremacy. To date, Wallace is the last third-party candidate to win any electoral votes by winning a plurality of any state's popular vote in a presidential election; however, the party's influence waned when Wallace rejoined the Democrats in 1972. While the AIP still exists, it does so solely as the California affiliate of the Constitution Party. The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Party_(1969) American Party]] (full name American Party of the United States) is an offshoot of the American Independent Party; the AIP also nominated Republicans Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2016.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_(United_States) Reform Party]]''' was a centrist populist third party established after Texas billionaire Ross Perot's 1992 independent presidential run, in which he won 19% of the popular vote and became the first presidential campaign since 1912 that was seen as having been capable of winning the election. Perot first ran under the Reform Party banner for president in 1996 and won 8% of the vote. The Reform Party had its greatest success in 1998 when Wrestling/JesseVentura was elected governor of Minnesota. The party was founded on Perot's signature campaign issues of reducing the federal deficit and national debt, but soon fell prey to infighting between three groups: the "old guard" Perot faction, the libertarian Ventura faction, and the Christian conservative wing led by former Republican pundit Pat Buchanan, who had worked for the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. The party collapsed after it nominated Buchanan for president in 2000 and he won only 0.4% of the vote. While there is still a national organization, the party no longer meaningfully exists as a national entity.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Party_(United_States) Reform Party]]''' was a populist third party established in the wake of Texas billionaire Ross Perot's 1992 independent presidential run, which won 19% of the popular vote and became the first presidential campaign since 1912 that was seen as having been capable of winning an election. The Reform Party had its greatest success in 1998 when Wrestling/JesseVentura was elected governor of Minnesota, but it soon fell prey to infighting between three groups: the "old guard" Perot faction, the libertarian Ventura faction, and a Christian conservative wing led by former Republican candidate, Nixon, Ford and Reagan administration member, and pundit Pat Buchanan. The party collapsed in the wake of the 2000 election, where Buchanan won its nomination, and while there is still a national organization, the party no longer meaningfully exists as a national entity.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States) Libertarian Party]]''' aims to be the leading party for libertarianism (though some libertarians do not agree with some of the LP's stances). By [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_%28United_States%29#cite_note-1 several metrics]] it is America's third-largest political party, having come in third in every presidential election since 2012 and was the only third party to have ballot access in all 50 states and [=DC=] in 2016 and 2020. Libertarians tend to favor maximum individual liberty (pro-gun rights, pro-gay rights, pro-drug legalization, pro-legal abortion, anti-Patriot Act, anti-censorship), maximum economic liberty (loose environmental and labor laws, pro-free trade, anti-tax, anti-bailout), and very limited government involvement in social welfare. Libertarians do not identify themselves as 'left' or 'right' in the traditional sense -- most would argue for a biaxial system of political identification, with 'conservative' and 'liberal' on the economic axis and 'libertarian' and 'authoritarian' on the social axis. The party had a seat in Congress for a year after Rep. Justin Amash changed his affiliation in 2020.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Party_(United_States) Green Party]]''' is probably the most famous third party in the country, mainly thanks to the high-profile presidential run of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in 2000. By any measure, they are quite leftist, supporting fair trade, pacifism, an end to the War on Drugs, local government, internationalism, very liberal views on civil liberties and social issues, opposition to the Patriot Act, and a strong welfare state -- in other words, not too far from other Green Parties worldwide and European-style social democrats. Their main focus, however, is environmentalism, as their name suggests. Supporters are often stereotyped as tree-hugging hippies and socialists. If you see a character in fiction who supports the Green Party, then he or she is probably a NewAgeRetroHippie or a GranolaGirl. From the late 2010s on, Green Party ideology has started to be adapted by Democrats and Democratic Party-adjacent people like Bernie Sanders.

* The '''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_(United_States) Libertarian Party]]''' aims to be the leading party for libertarianism (though some libertarians do not agree with some of the LP's stances). It is America's third-largest political party according to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_%28United_States%29#cite_note-1 these sources]] as of 2011. Libertarians tend to favor maximum individual liberty (pro-gun rights, pro-gay rights, pro-drug legalization, pro-legal abortion, anti-Patriot Act, anti-censorship), maximum economic liberty (loose environmental and labor laws, pro-free trade, anti-tax, anti-bailout), and very limited government involvement in social welfare. Libertarians do not identify themselves as 'left' or 'right' in the traditional sense -- most would argue for a biaxial system of political identification, with 'conservative' and 'liberal' on the economic axis and 'libertarian' and 'authoritarian' on the social axis.