To the ballot box.
Of which there are none in the USA. It's all electronic voting, using systems that have been absolutely established are heavily rigged, effectively to the point of the highest bidder winning each election. Incidentally the vote tallies are conducted by private companies - there's no such thing as the Electoral Commission as we have in Australia. Effectively the vote counting and reporting gets to be done by the media corporations. And it's been legally established by at least one court case in the US that the media corporations have _no_ legal obligation to be truthful in their reporting.
There are many astonishing cases of clear vote fraud each time the US has elections. Many claim that the US hasn't had a valid presidential election for over a decade.
Then there's the whole issue of how functional democracy is, when most people get all their news through six corporations that own virtually all the mainstream print and electronic news channels.
Two groups that tracks vote fraud:
http://blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.votefraud.org/
http://everist.org/archives/links/_Vote_fraud_USA_links.txt
In the USA, our state elections are controlled by the states whereas the federal elections are controlled by the federal government. Federal elections are therefore more consistent (not to say it is well executed). That said, local elections managed by local governments can be much much worst.
While we have laws controlling the elections, but in practice it is difficult to use the laws to enforce adherence to proper behavior. I recall a California congressional election about two decades ago, a sitting congressman was defeated by a questionable vote count. He took it to the courts. By the time the courts finished and ruled the election improperly conducted, the two-year congressional term in question was already over. He never regained his rightful seat. The one who was really not lawfully elected served the entire term and was reelected - by then, the one who should have been lawfully serving was sidelined the whole term and was no longer in position to run against the illegally elected opponent in the following term.
In this pass cycle, we had a sitting congressman narrowly defeated - with (at least) one large district going to his opponent at 107% voter turn out - 107% meaning for every 100 voters, there was 107 votes. That large district's huge vote count decided the election - but with 107% turn out... This congressman did not take it to court perhaps learning from this former Californian congressman's financially costly court battles 2 decades ago. For this same election cycle, in some cases, we had over 140% turn out.
Math question: What is the probability of a candidate with 90% support to receive 19,000 votes in a roll? Even Putan's got just 95% of the vote, for heavens sake, at least try to make it look some what real. 6 precincts in that district, result: 19600 to 0...
I think our system here in the USA is too much designed by gentleman for a contest between gentlemen. When rules are not followed, our system kind of get caught with "deer in the head light" problem.