State and federal courts in presidential election litigation

¶ … Election:

The coming presidential elections in the United States will be conducted on Tuesday, November 6, 2012 and will be America's 57th quadrennial presidential election. As the election approaches, various initiatives and measures have been taken to educate and empower America's voting public and create an increasingly responsible government. These efforts have primarily involved the provision of comprehensive, non-partisan information that relate to presidential candidates, news, issues, and political parties. These initiatives are mainly geared towards providing a platform for voters and non-voters to regularly obtain useful, straightforward, and impartial information linked to politics and issues. However, the major issue revolving around these elections is how the election results will be determined by current and previous decisions of the court. This is mainly because of the increased expectation that the coming presidential election may be a close election.

Presidential Election Laws:

The United States presidential elections are guided by constitutional provisions that govern the election process. According to Article II of the Constitution, the Congress may establish the time of choosing the electors and the day of voting throughout the country ("Presidential Election Laws," n.d.). On the day of voting, voters or electors meet in their respective states and vote through ballot for the President and the Vice-President ("Election Law -- An Overview," n.d.). Once the voting process has been completed, the President of the Senate, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives opens each certificate to pave way for the commencement of counting.

The candidate with the highest number of votes for President becomes the President, if the number of votes represents a majority of the total number of appointed electors. If no candidate ha such majority, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose the President by ballot from the top three candidates with the highest number of votes of those voted for as President. In this process, the votes shall be taken by states as the representation from each state has one vote. Therefore, a quorum for the election of the President in this scenario will consist of members from two-thirds of the states in which a majority of all the states will be necessary to make the choice or decision. These procedures would be similar to the election of the Vice-President except the election of the Vice-President would be conducted by at least two-thirds of all Senators in the Senate in case the number of votes for the Vice-President does not equal majority of votes. Notably, an individual who is constitutionally ineligible to vie for the Office of President will also be ineligible to contest for Vice-President of the United States.

Determination of Presidential Elections:

The coming presidential elections in the United States in November seem to rank among the most important elections for the American economy for years. This is because the results of this election will have a significant impact on the future regulatory and business environment for various industries and sectors (Parnell, 2012). The results of the election will also have significant impact on the expectations of future tax policy and determining who will be guiding monetary policy as the head of the United States Federal Reserve.

There are various critical factors that help in determining the outcome of presidential elections in America, especially with the significance and probable impact of the elections. First, many Americans believe that the economy plays a crucial role in determining who wins the presidency (Roth, 2012). Actually, there is a significant amount of work dedicated to the impacts the economy has on presidential elections in America. Secondly, incumbency is a significant factor in determining presidential elections in the United States since 70% of incumbents have won presidential elections for the past 56 presidential elections. While economic conditions are significant factors, they are usually surpassed in elections where an incumbent faces a challenger. The main reason in this case is that the incumbent tends to have significant advantages over a challenger that overshadow economic conditions. The third factor in determining U.S. presidential elections is the effect of issue emphasis during political campaigns as evident in the outcomes of elections from 1952 to 2004 (Grypari, 2011).

The Upcoming U.S. Presidential Elections:

A historical analysis shows that President Obama has a tremendous statistical advantage in running for re-election due to the role of incumbency in United States presidential elections. However, if economic conditions continue to deteriorate in the coming weeks, Obama's status as an incumbent may rapidly turn to a liability and start to favor Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate. While the winner of the coming election is likely to have a significant effect on the economy, the current economic conditions are likely to have a profound effect on which candidate will win the election.

One of the most significant factors in determining the winner of the upcoming presidential elections is the court. As the political campaigns point towards a close election, the coming presidential elections may be determined by previous or current court decisions. Generally, previous and current court decisions have profound effects on presidential elections because they affect the other critical factors that determine the winner of the elections.

According to Walsh (2012), there has been significant analysis and debate regarding the impact of Supreme Court decisions on the outcome of presidential elections because of their impact on political campaigns. An example of previous court decisions is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that ruled that the government may not prohibit independent political spending by corporations, labor unions, and other organizations in candidate elections ("Campaign Finance," 2012). The decision has been widely criticized for creating or contributing to a political landscape soaked in money. As a result of this decision, the coming presidential election is seemingly certain to be the most expensive in history since the two main candidates established lofty fund-raising goals. Therefore, as money floods into their political campaigns, the independent political committees have been supercharged by various court decisions.

State and federal courts also have an impact in the determination of the results of the coming presidential elections. In the states, chains of several court battles may in the coming weeks determine everything related to conducting presidential elections, which may affect the outcome of the elections. The decision by the state courts may determine how individuals will vote, what ballots will look like, and the time polling stations will be open ("Late Court Decisions," 2012). On the contrary, federal courts may be used as the avenue for changing or recounting the results of presidential elections. For instance, the outcome of the 2000 U.S. presidential elections was affected by decision by Florida Supreme Court to order a recount of votes in certain controversial regions (Sutin, n.d.). Therefore, while essential arrangements of the Electoral College can be altered by a constitutional amendment, some elements of these systems could be changed by state and federal courts and affect the results of presidential elections (Coleman, Garrett & Neale, 2012).