Can someone explain how the electoral college works in 100 words or less?
339333
Wow!!!  I bet none of these answers have so far answered your question uh?  Pretty bad.......
1038384
Why don't people ever get this? Don't they teach Civics in school anymore? Only 538 people voted in the Presidential Election. The rest of us voted for Electors. That's why it's called an Electoral College.\n\nDuh.
32779
The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism of presidential elections that was created by the framers of the U.S. Constitution as a compromise for the presidential election process. At the time, some politicians believed a purely popular election was too reckless, while others objected to giving Congress the power to select the president. The compromise was to set up an Electoral College system that allowed voters to vote for electors, who would then cast their votes for candidates, a system described in Article II, section 1 of the Constitution.
1127766
61 Million votes\n\nThat's how.
874959
Members of the electoral college are selected by the respective state political parties. Generally, this is done at their annual conventions and the electors are normally party loyalists and workers. Each party submits a slate of electors to the state Registrar prior to the general election. The party whose candidate receives the majority of the votes in a given state will have its set of electors certified as the official members of the electoral college and they are sent to Washington D.C. to cast their ballots. Once the election results are affirmed, the electors are disbanded until the next election in four years.\n\nYou can find out the names of the people on the slate of electors by contacting the respective party HQ in your state or by contacting the State Registrar's office. They will not have the information however until after the state political conventions during the election year.
672631
Alabama, my current home state, has 9 electoral votes.\n\nhttp://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/calculator.html
913110
The Constitution mandates that the President and Vice President be chosen by Electors (members of the Electoral College). Only the Electoral college vote is used determine who becomes President. There is actually no national popular vote as far as the Constitution is concerned. See Article II and the 12th Amendment. \n\nThe Electors are chosen by the citizens of the states, according to laws established by the states. So, each state determines the formula for how the popular state vote is converted to an electoral vote, and then directs the state's Electors to vote that way.\n\nMost states allocate Electoral votes all-or-nothing, based on which candidate gets the highest number of votes in the state. So, if a candidate gets 51% of the popular votes in a state, that candidate gets 100% of the Electoral votes for that state.\n\nThe problem with the Electoral college is two-fold. First, it results in situations where a person loses the national popular vote, but because of the way the formula is applied ends up getting a majority of Electoral votes.\n\nThe other problem is that the all-or-nothing system effectively locks us into a two-party system, since a candidate must get the majority of votes in a state before ANY of the Electoral votes count. So, in a three-way race, someone could easily get 2/3 of the national popular vote, yet still fall below the threshold in every single state and thus end up with NO electoral votes at all.
260230
Well its complicated really. Each state has a certain number of electors that are based on the amount of congress persons that state has representing them in Washington. So if a state has 4 members in the House and 2 in the Senate, then the state has a total of 6 electors. If the popular vote is won by the republican candidate for a state then the republican candidate WILL get the electors for that sate. The only two states that are an exception to that rule are Maine and Nebraska. In those two states the electors could be divided between the candidates of both parties, but that has yet to happen. The complicated part is that the nation wide popular vote doesn't not guarantee one candidate will win. Each state has a certain number of electors, so the final result is based on the amount of electors received, and the amount of electors is based on Congress person, and the balance there is based on the population, not the amount of registered voters. For the most part the popular vote dose determine the winner, but there is a chance that the a candidate can win the presidency and loose the popular vote. To my knowledge this has only happened once in the history of the nation.
922672
The electoral college works by giving each state a certain number of votes for president.  Big states like California and New York have more votes than states with fewer people, like Iowa and Montana.\n\nYou need to look at the numbers of votes each state has.  Then look at which states Bush and Kerry won.  When you add up the votes from the different states, Bush had more total votes than Kerry.\n\nTo answer your questions, you need to figure out three different combinations of states that would have still made Bush won, and three different combinations of states that would have made Kerry win.
29280
Your partly right.  It keeps this country a Federal Republic because what happens when we vote for President we are actually voting for the electorial college. \n\nIf we didn't have the electoral college There wouldn't be any need for canidates to visit all the states.  Then it just comes down to the biggest states.\n\nThe electoral college gives the smaller states a voice in government so that the bigger states can impose their will on the whole country
724804
The Electoral college in many ways is a remnant of the past. It is bloated, cost too much money, and is ripe for corruption\n\nTwo US Presidents have been elected by the electoral vote, despite losing the popular vote! In a Democracy, the popular vote should always be more important.
755889
We need a better system than the electoral college. I don't understand how one candidate can win the popular vote, but because of a few electoral judges, cannot win the election.
430186
the number of electors is the number of representatives in the house plus senators that state has. Michigan for example has 15 representatives and 2 senators. this means they have 17 electoral college votes
924776
Our votes are "Counted" in each state and "members" of the "electoral collage" relay the number of votes from the state they represent (or do they ?) until they are added together , and the winner is chosen - Like in the last election down in Florida - (wink-wink ) The winner has already been bought....I mean voted for ....silly me !!!!
292320
Do you mean registering to vote?   Electoral Votes are established for each state, not based on registration. I believe.
952352
First, there would need to be a Constitutional Amendment passes to change the way the President and Vice President is selected. This usually takes a couple years to do. It could be done faster, but it would need to be approved by 3/4 of the states, and a lot of them are smaller and benefit from the electoral system more than they would from a popular vote. So you need to convince them that it is needed.\n\nAfter that, Congress would then need to work out all the various details on doing a national popular election. As it is now, that is left to the States. There are very few laws on the federal level dealing with elections. And after this, I'm sure there would be several states fighting these laws in court for a few years, claiming the new laws were unconstitutional because they infringe on the State's rights.\n\nWe have less than two years before the next election. I don't think that is enough time to get all this done. A better idea (and quicker) is to convince your state legislators to change the way they distribute their votes. Most states (48 of them) give all electoral votes to whoever wins the popular vote in the state. Get your state to change it to distribute it more proportional to the popular vote (unless you already live in one of the two states that do something like this).
1151002
The ballot is the card you fill out to vote for individual offices.  I think you are asking about the electoral college, which is a group of people selected to cast votes for the president based upon the way the population of a state voted.  However, not all states are required to distribute ballots in the college based on the way the state voted.  Essentially the college was first created because we couldn't let farmers and immigrants who could not read and write truly select who wins an election.  Still around for the same reason today...too many stupid people get a choice.