who votes to make someone a presidential party nominee
delegates
title: President of the United States text: electoral votes to Congress. The votes of the electors are opened and counted during a joint session of Congress, held in the first week of January. If a candidate has received an absolute majority of electoral votes for president (currently 270 of 538), that person is declared the winner. Otherwise, the House of Representatives must meet to elect a president using a contingent election procedure in which representatives, voting by state delegation, with each state casting a single vote, choose between the top electoral vote-getters for president. For a candidate to win, he or she must receive the votes of title: Presidential nominee text: Presidential nominee In United States politics and government, the term presidential nominee has two different meanings: In United States presidential elections, the presumptive nominee is a presidential candidate who is assumed to be their party's nominee, but has not yet been formally nominated or elected by their political party at the party's nominating convention. Ordinarily, a candidate becomes the presumptive nominee of their party when their "last serious challenger drops out" or when the candidate "mathematically clinches—whichever comes first. But there is still room for interpretation." A candidate mathematically clinches a nomination by securing a simple majority (i.e., more than title: Nomination text: Nomination Nomination is part of the process of selecting a candidate for either election to a public office, or the bestowing of an honor or award. A collection of nominees narrowed from the full list of candidates is a short list. In the context of elections for public office, a candidate who has been selected to represent or is endorsed by a political party is said to be the party's nominee. The process of selection may be based on one or more primary elections or by means of a political party convention or caucus, according to the rules of the title: United States presidential nominating convention text: United States presidential nominating convention A United States presidential nominating convention is a political convention held every four years in the United States by most of the political parties who will be fielding nominees in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The formal purpose of such a convention is to select the party's nominee for President, as well as to adopt a statement of party principles and goals known as the "platform" and adopt the rules for the party's activities, including the presidential nominating process for the next election cycle. In the modern U.S. presidential election process, voters participating in the title: United States presidential election text: are generally held between January and June before the general election in November, while the nominating conventions are held in the summer. Though not codified by law, political parties also follow an indirect election process, where voters in the 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, cast ballots for a slate of delegates to a political party's nominating convention, who then in turn elect their party's presidential nominee. Each party may then choose a vice presidential running mate to join the ticket, which is either determined by choice of the nominee or by a second round of voting. Because