Because the U.S. Constitution establishes a federal system, the state governments enjoy extensive authority. The Constitution outlines the specific powers granted to the national government and reserves the remainder to the states. However, because of ambiguity in the Constitution and disparate historical interpretations by the federal courts, the powers actually exercised by the states have waxed and waned over time. Beginning in the last decades of the 20th century, for example, decisions by conservative-leaning federal courts, along with a general trend favoring the decentralization of government, increased the power of the states relative to the federal government. In some areas, the authority of the federal and state governments overlap; for example, the state and federal governments both have the power to tax, establish courts, and make and enforce laws. In other areas, such as the regulation of commerce within a state, the establishment of local governments, and action on public health, safety, and morals, the state governments have considerable discretion. The Constitution also denies to the states certain powers; for example, the Constitution forbids states to enter into treaties, to tax imports or exports, or to coin money. States also may not adopt laws that contradict the U.S. Constitution.

The governments of the 50 states have structures closely paralleling those of the federal government. Each state has a governor, a legislature, and a judiciary. Each state also has its own constitution.

Mirroring the U.S. Congress, all state legislatures are bicameral except Nebraska’s, which is unicameral. Most state judicial systems are based upon elected justices of the peace (although in many states this term is not used), above whom are major trial courts, often called district courts, and appellate courts. Each state has its own supreme court. In addition, there are probate courts concerned with wills, estates, and guardianships. Most state judges are elected, though some states use an appointment process similar to the federal courts and some use a nonpartisan selection process known as the Missouri Plan.

State governors are directly elected and serve varying terms (generally ranging from two to four years); in some states, the number of terms a governor may serve is limited. The powers of governors also vary, with some state constitutions ceding substantial authority to the chief executive (such as appointment and budgetary powers and the authority to veto legislation). In a few states, however, governors have highly circumscribed authority, with the constitution denying them the power to veto legislative bills.

Most states have a lieutenant governor, who is often elected independently of the governor and is sometimes not a member of the governor’s party. Lieutenant governors generally serve as the presiding officer of the state Senate. Other elected officials commonly include a secretary of state, state treasurer, state auditor, attorney general, and superintendent of public instruction.

State governments have a wide array of functions, encompassing conservation, highway and motor vehicle supervision, public safety and corrections, professional licensing, regulation of agriculture and of intrastate business and industry, and certain aspects of education, public health, and welfare. The administrative departments that oversee these activities are headed by the governor.

Each state may establish local governments to assist it in carrying out its constitutional powers. Local governments exercise only those powers that are granted to them by the states, and a state may redefine the role and authority of local government as it deems appropriate. The country has a long tradition of local democracy (e.g., the town meeting), and even some of the smallest areas have their own governments. There are some 85,000 local government units in the United States. The largest local government unit is the county (called a parish in Louisiana or a borough in Alaska). Counties range in population from as few as 100 people to millions (e.g., Los Angeles county). They often provide local services in rural areas and are responsible for law enforcement and keeping vital records. Smaller units include townships, villages, school districts, and special districts (e.g., housing authorities, conservation districts, and water authorities).

Municipal, or city, governments are responsible for delivering most local services, particularly in urban areas. At the beginning of the 21st century there were some 20,000 municipal governments in the United States. They are more diverse in structure than state governments. There are three basic types: mayor-council, commission, and council-manager governments. The mayor-council form, which is used in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago, and thousands of smaller cities, consists of an elected mayor and council. The power of mayors and councils vary from city to city; in most cities the mayor has limited powers and serves largely as a ceremonial leader, but in some cities (particularly large urban areas) the council is nominally responsible for formulating city ordinances, which the mayor enforces, but the mayor often controls the actions of the council. In the commission type, used less frequently now than it was in the early 20th century, voters elect a number of commissioners, each of whom serves as head of a city department; the presiding commissioner is generally the mayor. In the council-manager type, used in large cities such as Charlotte (North Carolina), Dallas (Texas), Phoenix (Arizona), and San Diego (California), an elected council hires a city manager to administer the city departments. The mayor, elected by the council, simply chairs the council and officiates at important functions.

As society has become increasingly urban, politics and government have become more complex. Many problems of the cities, including transportation, housing, education, health, and welfare, can no longer be handled entirely on the local level. Because even the states do not have the necessary resources, cities have often turned to the federal government for assistance, though proponents of local control have urged that the federal government provide block-grant aid to state and local governments without federal restrictions.

Political process

The framers of the U.S. Constitution focused their efforts primarily on the role, power, and function of the state and national governments, only briefly addressing the political and electoral process. Indeed, three of the Constitution’s four references to the election of public officials left the details to be determined by Congress or the states. The fourth reference, in Article II, Section 1, prescribed the role of the Electoral College in choosing the president, but this section was soon amended (in 1804 by the Twelfth Amendment) to remedy the technical defects that had arisen in 1800, when all Democratic-Republican Party electors cast their votes for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, thereby creating a tie because electors were unable to differentiate between their presidential and vice presidential choices. (The election of 1800 was finally settled by Congress, which selected Jefferson president following 36 ballots.)

In establishing the Electoral College, the framers stipulated that “Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.” In 1845 Congress established that presidential electors would be appointed on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November; the electors cast their ballots on the Monday following the second Wednesday in December. Article I, establishing Congress, merely provides (Section 2) that representatives are to be “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States” and that voting qualifications are to be the same for Congress as for the “most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” Initially, senators were chosen by their respective state legislatures (Section 3), though this was changed to popular election by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. Section 4 leaves to the states the prescription of the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives” but gives Congress the power “at any time by Law [to] make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” In 1875 Congress designated the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even years as federal election day.

Suffrage

All citizens at least 18 years of age are eligible to vote. (Prisoners, ex-felons, and individuals on probation or parole are prohibited, sometimes permanently, from voting in some states.) The history of voting rights in the United States has been one of gradual extension of the franchise. Religion, property ownership, race, and gender have disappeared one by one as legal barriers to voting. In 1870, through the Fifteenth Amendment, formerly enslaved people were granted the right to vote, though African Americans were subsequently still denied the franchise (particularly in the South) through devices such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. Only in the 1960s, through the Twenty-fourth Amendment (barring poll taxes) and the Voting Rights Act, were the full voting rights of African Americans guaranteed. Though universal manhood suffrage had theoretically been achieved following the American Civil War, women’s suffrage was not fully guaranteed until 1920 with the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment (several states, particularly in the West, had begun granting women the right to vote and to run for political office beginning in the late 19th century). Suffrage was also extended by the Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971), which lowered the minimum voting age to 18.

Voting and elections

Voters go to the polls in the United States not only to elect members of Congress and presidential electors but also to cast ballots for state and local officials, including governors, mayors, and judges, and on ballot initiatives and referendums that may range from local bond issues to state constitutional amendments (see referendum and initiative). The 435 members of the House of Representatives are chosen by the direct vote of the electorate in single-member districts in each state. State legislatures (sometimes with input from the courts) draw congressional district boundaries, often for partisan advantage (see gerrymandering); incumbents have always enjoyed an electoral advantage over challengers, but, as computer technology has made redistricting more sophisticated and easier to manipulate, elections to the House of Representatives have become even less competitive, with more than 90 percent of incumbents who choose to run for reelection regularly winning—often by significant margins. By contrast, Senate elections are generally more competitive.

Voters indirectly elect the president and vice president through the Electoral College. Instead of choosing a candidate, voters actually choose electors committed to support a particular candidate. Each state is allotted one electoral vote for each of its senators and representatives in Congress; the Twenty-third Amendment (1961) granted electoral votes to the District of Columbia, which does not have congressional representation. A candidate must win a majority (270) of the 538 electoral votes to be elected president. If no candidate wins a majority, the House of Representatives selects the president, with each state delegation receiving one vote; the Senate elects the vice president if no vice presidential candidate secures an Electoral College majority. A candidate may lose the popular vote but be elected president by winning a majority of the electoral vote (as George W. Bush did in the U.S. presidential election of 2000), though such inversions are rare. Presidential elections are costly and generate much media and public attention—sometimes years before the actual date of the general election. Indeed, some presidential aspirants have declared their candidacies years in advance of the first primaries and caucuses, and some White House hopefuls drop out of the grueling process long before the first votes are cast.

Voting in the United States is not compulsory, and, in contrast to most other Western countries, voter turnout is quite low. In the late 20th and the early 21st century, about 50 percent of Americans cast ballots in presidential elections; turnout was even lower for congressional and state and local elections, with participation dropping under 40 percent for most congressional midterm elections (held midway through a president’s four-year term). Indeed, in some local elections (such as school board elections or bond issues) and primaries or caucuses, turnout has sometimes fallen below 10 percent. High abstention rates led to efforts to encourage voter participation by making voting easier. For example, in 1993 Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (the so-called “motor-voter law”), which required states to allow citizens to register to vote when they received their driver’s licenses, and in 1998 voters in Oregon approved a referendum that established a mail-in voting system. In addition, some states now allow residents to register to vote on election day, polls are opened on multiple days and in multiple locations in some states, and Internet voting has even been introduced on a limited basis for some elections.

Money and campaigns

Campaigns for all levels of office are expensive in the United States compared with those in most other democratic countries. In an attempt to reduce the influence of money in the political process, reforms were instituted in the 1970s that required public disclosure of contributions and limited the amounts of contributions to candidates for federal office. Individuals were allowed to contribute directly to a candidate no more than $1,000 in so-called “hard money” (i.e., money regulated by federal election law) per candidate per election. The law, however, allowed labor unions, corporations, political advocacy groups, and political parties to raise and spend unregulated “soft money,” so long as funds were not spent specifically to support a candidate for federal office (in practice, this distinction was often blurry). Because there were no limits on such soft money, individuals or groups could contribute to political parties any sum at their disposal or spend limitlessly to advocate policy positions (often to the benefit or detriment of particular candidates). In the 2000 election cycle, it is estimated that more than $1 billion was spent by the Democratic and Republican parties and candidates for office, with more than two-fifths of this total coming from soft money contributions.

Concerns about campaign financing led to the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (popularly called the “McCain-Feingold law” for its two chief sponsors in the Senate, Republican John McCain and Democrat Russell Feingold), which banned national political parties from raising soft money. The law also increased the amount individuals could contribute to candidates (indexing the amount for inflation) and prevented interest groups from broadcasting advertisements that specifically referred to a candidate within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election.

In 2010 the contribution limits imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act were partly invalidated by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that contributions made for independent electioneering communications were a form of constitutionally protected free speech that could not be limited by law. The controversial decision was hailed by some as a resounding victory for freedom of speech, whereas others criticized it as an overreaching attempt to rewrite campaign finance law. The judgment led to the growth of so-called Super PACs, organizations allowed to raise unlimited amounts of money to support or defeat a candidate or an issue so long as those expenditures were made independently from the official campaign.

There are no federal limits on how much an individual may spend on his or her own candidacy. In 1992, for example, Ross Perot spent more than $60 million of his fortune on his unsuccessful bid to become president of the United States, and Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York City in 2001 after spending nearly $70 million of his own funds.