How the Electoral College Actually Works

TThe 2024 presidential election is just around the corner as former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris push to collect votes before November 5th. The winner is determined not by the number of votes cast for them, but by a group of 538 people making up the electoral college.

“If you vote for the president, you’re not voting for the president,” says William Field, a political science professor at Rutgers University. Instead, you vote for that party’s voters, who typically vote for the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in that state.

It’s a process that dates back centuries and has proven controversial, particularly in cases where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. Most recently, Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, although he received almost three million fewer votes overall. This marked the fifth time in US history that a candidate became president without winning the most votes.

According to a 2024 Pew Research Center report, 63 percent of Americans say they would prefer the winner of the presidential election to be determined by a popular vote, although there are partisan differences. Eight in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independent voters support abolishing the Electoral College, compared to 46% of Republicans.

Despite more than 700 proposals introduced in Congress to reform or abolish the Electoral College, it remains in place today, according to the National Archives.

Here’s what you should know about how the Electoral College actually works.

How does the electoral college work?

Under the Electoral College, all 50 states and the District of Columbia are allocated a certain number of electoral votes equal to the number of their two senators and the number of their representatives. Because representatives are based on a state’s population, that means larger states like California and Texas have the most electoral votes, with 54 and 40, respectively. Five states – Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming – have the fewest electoral votes, with three. The election is essentially decided on a state-by-state basis. If a candidate wins the popular vote in a state, he or she typically receives all of the state’s Electoral College votes – even if the race is close.

But Maine and Nebraska have split electoral votes, meaning two electoral votes are awarded to the state’s popular vote winner and then one electoral vote goes to the popular vote winner per congressional district.

How many votes do you need to win?

In total, there are 538 voters who vote for a particular presidential candidate. To win the presidential election, candidates must receive a majority of the possible 538 votes, i.e. at least 270 votes.

After voters cast their ballots on Election Day, elections are finally called in all states, with the first results coming in on Election Day. States have until December 10 to resolve any disputes or complete the recount of results. On December 17, voters will meet to cast their vote for president. Copies of the ballots are then sent to the President of the U.S. Senate or Vice President for official counting. On January 6, Congress meets to count the electoral votes and certify the victory of the candidate who received at least 270.

If no presidential candidate receives 270 votes, Congress elects the president and vice president. Each state’s House of Representatives representatives will vote for a candidate. In this scenario, a candidate must receive at least 26 votes to win the presidency. The Senate elects the vice president. Each senator casts one vote for a vice presidential candidate, and whoever receives 51 votes is elected. If the House of Representatives does not elect a president by Inauguration Day, January 20, the vice president-elect will become interim president until the House makes a decision.

Why we have the Electoral College

The rules for the Electoral College are set forth in the 12th Amendment. Since democracy was a new idea at the time, the nation’s founding fathers thought it would be best if the states elected a president rather than voters directly.

That decision was part of the checks and balances prevalent throughout the American political system, but it also reflected the Founding Fathers’ lack of trust in voters, says John Sacher, a history professor at the University of Central Florida.

“They wanted white men who owned property to vote,” he says. “They wanted to make sure the voters were virtuous. They feared that if people were given too much power, they would make bad decisions.”

The logistics of the time also made it more difficult to get people to vote in a time of reduced and slower transportation, lower literacy rates, and limited educational opportunities. In fact, it was not until the election of 1824 that eligible voters, not just voters, cast their votes for the next leader of the United States

Read more: The debate that gave us the Electoral College

Slavery also played a role in the creation of the Electoral College, when delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention agreed to the so-called Three-Fifths Compromise to determine representation in the House of Representatives. “In order to distribute the number of congressional seats and thus the electoral votes, they would count an enslaved person as three-fifths of a human being,” Field says. “They couldn’t vote, but it apparently increased the population of the states where there were many lay people.” This meant that people in the North did not have significantly more power than people in the South, where many people remained enslaved.

How is a voter selected?

Voters are selected by each political party, but guidelines vary by state. Among the guidelines, which apply to all states, is that no senator, representative, or person holding any “office of trust or profit in the United States” can be an elector. Public officials who have previously “promoted an insurrection or rebellion against the United States or given aid and comfort to its enemies” are also disqualified.

What happens if a voter defects?

While voters often vote for the presidential candidate they promised to vote for, sometimes “faithless voters” do not. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, seven electors defected in 2016, the most since 1972. Thirty-five states and D.C. have laws against faithless electors. Depending on the state, violating these laws can result in fines or disqualification from voting. In New Mexico and South Carolina, faithless voters could face criminal penalties. But these faithless actors never changed the outcome of an election.