Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to improve their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

Today I want to talk to you about something called the American elections. I’ll explain how they work, and we’ll talk about two people you might have heard of: Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. I know that the American voting system can be quite complicated for us, the Czech people but do not worry, I am here to explain it to you so that by the end of the episode, you know exactly what is going on.

It is funny because you probably already know who won but I don’t because I am recording it on Election Day, Tuesday, 5th of November. But without further ado, let’s get started!

What is an Election?

We translate elections as “volby”. So, an election is like a big contest to choose a leader. 

In America, they have a big election every four years to choose their president, who is the person in charge of the country. And on Election Day, lots of people vote to say who they want to be their president. 

There is always a big circus around elections, as you might have noticed also in the Czech Republic. But in the United States, it is on a whole new level. People all over the world watch the American elections because America is a big country with lots of power. When they pick a new leader, that leader can make decisions that affect other countries too.  

Do you know how many people live in the US? Try to guess. 334 million people. That is like 30,9 times more than how many people live in the Czech Republic. Yes, I did the math. 

The thing is that people in the United States don’t vote the same way as they do in the Czech Republic so…

How Do People Vote?

In the United States, you have only two political parties – the Democrats and the Republicans. Each party always chooses one representative who is running for the president. Now, the president is Joe Biden who is a Democrat but before him, Trump was a Republican.

When people vote in America, they put a checkmark next to the person they like best. But here’s the tricky part: it’s not as simple as just counting all the votes. It is not like in the Czech Republic where we directly vote for the president. 

When Americans vote, they don’t vote for the president but they vote for electors in each state. Each state has a certain number of these electors based on its population. For example, California has many electors because it’s the most populated state, while smaller states like Vermont have only a few. These electors then vote for the president. In total, we have 538 electors. So people vote for the electors in the state and then the electors vote for the president. People should vote for the electors who stand for the president they want. To win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of the 538 electoral votes, which means at least 270.

I know the number 538 might seem a little random but it is proportionally responding to the number of senators and representatives. 

Even though people are voting for the electors, they also enter a vote for the president just to see the results. It is called a popular vote.

It is quite strange because it literally can happen that a certain candidate has more votes from people but loses the elections because they got fewer votes from the electors. That happened 8 years ago when they were deciding between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote but Trump was elected as a president. 

Who Are Donald Trump and Kamala Harris?

Let’s talk about two people who are very important in American politics this year.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump is a businessman and used to be on a TV show called The Apprentice, where he gave people jobs if they did a good job in his contests. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. His presidency was marked by several significant and controversial policies, especially around immigration, trade, and international relations. Maybe I will do a separate episode just about him because it is really something.

Trump ran for re-election in 2020 but was defeated by Joe Biden. Now, he wants to be president again, so he’s running for the election one more time. Some people really like him, and some people don’t, including me. I think his opinions are just out of whack and downright unhinged and the way he speaks, he just feels like a caricature of a person to me,… but we can’t deny that he’s still a big name in American politics. He is running for the republican party. 

If he wins, he’d be the second U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms- that means that he would not be a president two times in a row for 8 years but four years, then nothing and then again four years—the first was Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century!

Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris is the current vice president to Joe Biden. The vice president is like the president’s helper and is the second-most important person in the country. If the president is busy or needs help, the vice president steps in.

Kamala is special because she’s the first woman and first person of color (meaning she has a mix of backgrounds) to be vice president. By the way, if you hear someone saying POC, it means a person of colour. Specifically, Kamala is interracial because her mother was born in India and her father is African American born in Jamaica. She’s a lawyer and cares a lot about things like healthcare, people being treated fairly, and keeping the planet safe.

Now she is running for president for the democratic party so we will see how it turns out!

So, that’s a little bit about American elections and why people pay attention to them.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you learned something new! If you have questions, feel free to ask, and don’t forget, you can find a transcript and vocabulary list in the podcast notes. Until next time!