Leader Election: Nodes begin as followers. When a follower's election timeout fires, it becomes a candidate, increments its term, votes for itself, and sends RequestVote RPCs. A majority of votes wins the election.
Log Replication: The leader accepts client requests, appends entries to its log, then sends AppendEntries RPCs to all followers. Once a majority acknowledge, the entry is committed.
Terms: Raft divides time into terms with monotonically increasing numbers. Each term has at most one leader. Terms act as a logical clock to detect stale information.