US begins voting for next President -Tuesday Nov 06,2012

 

US begins voting for next President 

Voters wait hours in long lines to cast their vote at the Summit County Board of Elections in Akron, Ohio.

538 votes will decide the election between President Barack Obama and his republican challenger Mitt Romney. CNN's poll finds Obama barely leading Romney 49 % to 48 %.

President Barack Obama seems to have lost the high of 2008 and is just inches ahead of Mitt Romney. The US President is chosen by electoral college, which is comprised of 538 voters across 50 states in the US. Each state votes according to its population. 

CNN predicts Obama will take confidently 237 and that Romney will take 206

Eligible Voters

Any U.S. citizen above the age of 18 is eligible to vote in the U.S. general elections. According to the project, in 2012 an estimated 219 million people are eligible to cast their votes. 

Ineligible Voters

Those in prison, probation or in parole are debarred from voting.  An estimated 3.2 million — though having attained the voting age — are not eligible to vote because either they are in prison (1.6 million) or are on probation (1.32 million) or are on parole (about 630,000)

 

Tuesday’s elections will not only elect the next President, but also all seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of that in the Senate.

 

Final Campaigning

 

For President Barack Obama, it ended where it all began. Obama closed his 2012 campaign with a nighttime rally on Monday Nov 05,2012 in Iowa .

Barack Obama speaks to supporters during his final 2012 campaign event in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.

Barack Obama was joined at the rally by wife, Michelle, rocker Bruce Springsteen and a cadre of longtime advisers and friends who have been with him for the final stretch of his final campaign. The president spoke in front of the building that housed his 2008 campaign's state headquarters, one of the first offices his team opened.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney's last rally was in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is one of the nine swing states and has four electoral college votes.

The 9 swing states has 110 electoral college votes