At this time with our Presidential elections in November getting closer by the day and the lack of knowledge about how our President is elected I feel that an article explaining our election process is appropriate. It has become very apparent that there is an appalling lack of understanding of this process: e.g. comments made on this forum about Bush stealing the 2000 election , and by one of our representatives in the congress of the U.S., Corrine Brown of Fl. who was recentely censured for making the statement that the republicans stole the 2000 election, and many other like statements every day on t.v.
This November every state in the union will hold a seperate election for electors to the electorial college, these elections are referred to as presidential elections,however, they are not electing a person to be the president of the U.S.
These state elections are electing representatives to the electoral college. So we do not have one national presidential election, in fact we have 50 some state elections. After these elections are held, then the representatives from each state will attend the electorial college,and cast their votes and the person who receives 270 plus votes wins, out of the 538 total votes. ""The electorial college" is somewhat misleading it refers to a meeting, it is a convention of the electors.


The Electoral College is a system in which each state is assigned a number of votes equal to the number of senators and representatives. While each state has two senators the number of representatives vary by population as a result some states become "battle grounds" for example CA (54 votes), New York (33 votes), Texas (32 votes), Florida (25 votes), Pennsylvania (23 votes) and Illinois (22 votes). On the other hand states such as Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming each have three votes due to their relatively small populations, it should be noted that Washington DC also has three votes even though they do not have any senators or representatives. In total there are 538 electoral votes with 270 needed to win, a candidate must have greater than 50% of electoral votes to win. Obviously a candidate will not invest as much effort in winning votes in smaller states since their contribution to his/her success pales in comparison to the larger states.

When you vote in the election you are not voting for a candidate, rather you are voting for who will be in the electoral college. Whichever candidate receives the most votes chooses who will be electors (or his/her political party does the choosing) with the exception of Maine and Nebraska. An important distinction to make here is that electors are chosen but the votes are not guaranteed. The constitution's framers intentionally set up a system so that the electors could be "unfaithful" and vote for a candidate against his states wishes. However, this has occurred only in nine elections and has never changed the outcome. This fact is largely due to the electors being chosen for party loyalist who would most likely not change their vote.

Electoral Votes by State
Alabama 9 Kentucky 8 North Carolina 14
Alaska 3 Louisiana 9 North Dakota 3
Arizona 8 Maine 4 Ohio 21
Arkansas 6 Maryland 10 Oklahoma 8
California 54 Massachusetts 12 Oregon 7
Colorado 8 Michigan 18 Pennsylvania 23
Connecticut 8 Minnesota 10 Rhode Island 4
Delaware 3 Mississippi 7 South Carolina 8
District of Columbia 3 Missouri 11 South Dakota 3
Florida 25 Montana 3 Tennessee 11
Georgia 13 Nebraska 5 Texas 32
Hawaii 4 Nevada 4 Utah 5
Idaho 4 New Hampshire 4 Vermont 3
Illinois 22 New Jersey 15 Virginia 13
Indiana 12 New Mexico 5 Washington 11
Iowa 7 New York 33 West Virginia 5
Kansas 6 North Carolina 14 Wisconsin 11
Kentucky 8 North Dakota 3 Wyoming 3

I can not help but to be both sad and amazed at how great a number of American citizens do not have an understanding of this process, years ago I can remember this being taught in the sixth and seventh grades. I hope I never hear statements again that indicate this ignorance. Potszer