[UNPAYWALLED] The Midterm Elections, Explained

Tomorrow, millions of Americans will line up to decide whether Donald Trump gets two more years of doing basically whatever the fuck he wants, or whether someone can finally hit the brakes on his agenda - yup, it’s midterm time!!!!!

If, like me, you learn what midterms are every time they roll around, and then completely forget how they work, and how important they can actually be, then this is for you (and for anyone else who doesn’t live in America.)

In this explainer, I’ll answer these questions:

• What Is A Midterm?

• Who Votes And What Are They Actually Voting On?

• What Is Congress?

  • What’s the House of Representatives?

  • What’s the Senate?

• Is The President Separate From Congress?

• What’s The State Of Things Right Now?

• What Will the Democrats do if they Take Control?

• What Else Is On The Ballot?

Ur welcome ◡̈

What is a midterm?

Basically, it’s a mid-season performance review of the current sitch in America.

Americans elect a president every four years, and a midterm election is the vote halfway through that term.

Mid. Term. Middle of the current term. Say it with me.

Who votes and what are they actually voting on?

America votes! And I want to be very clear - they are not voting on Donald Trump! His name is not on the ballot. His actions kinda are, though.

What they’re actually voting on is members of Congress.

What is Congress?

It’s basically another word for parliament (she says as a New Zealander.)

Congress is made up of two parts or chambers - the House of Representatives and the Senate.

And both the House of Representatives and the Senate have to agree before anything becomes law.

Remember, Congress is the overarching name for those two parts. OK?

The House Of Representatives

What they do: Control the money and have subpoena power, which means they can investigate the administration, demand documents, and force officials to testify

The House has 435 seats. A seat is one job: one person representing one patch of the country, called a district.

And every single one of those 435 seats is up every two years.

To control the House, a party needs a majority, so 218 seats.

The Senate

What the Senate does: approves the president’s picks for judges and top jobs.

The Senate is made up of senators (it’s in the name) and has 100 seats, because every state gets exactly two (no matter how big or small it is).

America is made up of 50 states, and each state has its own laws, courts and taxes.

Senators serve six-year terms, but they’re staggered, so only about a third are up at a time. That’s the 35 seats this year (it’s like a flat where one flatmate moves out every two years, so it never fully resets.)

Is the President separate from Congress?

Yep. Here’s the biggest difference from us here in New Zealand. In Aotearoa, the Prime Minister is from the majority party (or coalition) in our parliament.

In America, the president is elected separately. So you can have a president from one party and a Congress controlled by the other.

Think of it like a company.

The president is the CEO, and Congress is the board.

The CEO can have big plans, but if the board says no, he can’t spend a cent or do anything.

Got it. What’s the state of things right now?

Right now, Republicans control everything. The White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Three out of three. That means that for the last two years, nobody in Congress has had the power to say no to Donald Trump.

Because Republicans hold both the House and the Senate, Trump’s wish list, from the money he spends to the people he appoints, goes through a Congress that is mostly on his side.

The midterms are the first real chance anyone has had to change that. If Democrats win just one of those two chambers, that’s a big brake on Trump’s agenda. He’d still have some power on his own, but he couldn’t count on Congress to rubber-stamp everything. Congress controls the money, the laws, the investigations, and who gets the big jobs. If the other team runs one chamber, expect new investigations and a much harder road for his plans.

What will the democrats do if they take control?

I feel like it’s important to note that the President still has veto power over a lot of things (when Congress passes a bill, the president has to sign it for it to become law, and if he doesn’t want to, he can reject it), so it won’t all be happy days, but here are some things they might do:

• They might try to impeach Trump for a third time. The House can impeach (which means formally charge), but removing him takes a two-thirds vote in the Senate, so he won’t be removed.

• They will likely bring some of the people appointed by Trump in for investigation, looking at some of the choices they’ve made while they’ve been basically given free rein

I also want to note that if Trump loses the House or the Senate, his next two years get much more difficult for him, and he is likely to lose influence as he’s obviously lost the power to retain some of his base.

What else is on the ballot?

It’s not just Congress on the ballot. Thirty-six of the 50 states are also voting for a governor, which is the elected boss of a state, a bit like if every region in Aotearoa had its own leader with real power over schools, health, police and roads.

Then there’s the local stuff, like mayors, school boards, basically boards, and actually, in a lot of places, Americans even vote for their judges.

I hope that made sense to you! And make sure you vote!

Luce xxx