This article is part of the series: Politics and government of the United States
Vice President Cabinet
Supreme Court Circuit Courts of Appeal District Courts
United States presidential elections determine who serves as president and vice president of the United States for four-year terms, starting at midday on Inauguration Day, which is January 20 of the year after the election. The elections are conducted by the various states, and not by the federal government.
The most recent election occurred on November 2, 2004. The next election is scheduled for November 4, 2008. Elections are held on Election Day—the Tuesday after the first Monday in November of every fourth year.
Technically, the election is done by electors who are chosen by vote of the people. The electors can vote for anyone, but with rare exceptions they vote for the designated candidates and their votes are certified by Congress in early January. The Congress is the final judge of the electors; the last serious dispute was in 1877.

How elections are administered
Voters are required to vote on a ballot where they select the candidate of their choice. The presidential ballot is actually voting "for the electors of a candidate" meaning that the voter is not actually voting for the candidate, but endorsing members of the Electoral College who will, in turn, directly elect the President.
Many voting ballots allow a voter to "blanket vote" for all candidates in a particular political party or to select individual candidates on a line by line voting system. Which candidates appear on the voting ticket is determined through a legal process known as ballot access. Usually, the size of the candidate's political party and the results of the major nomination conventions determine who is pre-listed on the presidential ballot. Thus, the presidential election ticket will not list every single candidate running for President, but only those who have secured a major party nomination or whose size of their political party warrants having been formally listed. Laws are in effect to have other candidates pre-listed on a ticket, provided that a sufficient number of voters have endorsed the candidate, usually through a signature list. Never, however, in U.S. history has a 3rd party candidate for president secured a place on the election ticket in this fashion.
The final way to be elected for president is to have one's name written in at the time of election as a write-in candidate. This is used for candidates who did not fulfill the legal requirements to be pre-listed on the voting ticket. It is also used by voters to express a distaste for the listed candidates, by writing in a ridiculous candidate for president such as Mickey Mouse or Darth Vader. In any event, a write-in candidate has never won an election for President of the United States.

Ballot candidates
An 1824 scenario occurs when no candidate receives enough electoral votes to win the election. In such a case, the president and vice president are chosen per the 12th Amendment. The selection of president is decided by a ballot of the House of Representatives. For the purposes of electing the president, each state only has one vote. A second ballot of the Senate is held to choose the vice president. In this ballot, each senator has one vote. The 1824 scenario is named for the presidential election of 1824, in which Andrew Jackson received a plurality, but not a majority, of electoral votes cast. 1824 is the only presidential election in which this provision of the 12th Amendment for presidential selection has been invoked. In all other presidential elections since the amendment's ratification, one candidate has received a majority of electoral votes cast.

1824 scenario
In recent decades, one of the presidential nominees of the Democratic and Republican parties has almost always been an incumbent president or a sitting or former vice president. When the candidate has not been a president or vice president, nominees of the two main parties have been state Governors or U.S. Senators. The last nominee from either party who had not previously served in such an office was General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who won the Republican nomination and ultimately the presidency in the 1952 election.
Contemporary electoral success has favored state governors. Of the last five presidents (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush), four have been governors of a state (all except for George H. W. Bush). Geographically, these presidents were all from either very large states (California, Texas) or from a state south of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of Texas (Georgia, Arkansas). The last sitting U.S. Senator to be elected president was John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in 1960. The only other sitting senator to be elected was Warren G. Harding in 1920, whereas major-party candidate Senators Andrew Jackson (1824), Lewis Cass (1848), Stephen Douglas (1860), Barry Goldwater (1964), George McGovern (1972), Walter Mondale (1984), Bob Dole (1996), and John Kerry (2004) all lost their elections.

Voter turnout

United States presidential primary
United States presidential nominating convention
United States presidential election debates
List of United States presidential elections by Electoral College margin
American election campaigns in the 19th century
United States presidential election, 2008