Apportionment of Electors

• The Electoral College is the mechanism through which Americans indirectly elect their president. Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States says, "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector." What this means is that a state receives an electoral vote equal to its congressional delegation. Kentucky, with six congressmen and two senators, has an electoral vote of eight. California, with 53 congressmen and two senators, gets 55. This skews the Electoral College slightly toward states with small populations, because of the plus-two in the formula for the pair of senators every state has. For example, Montana has a population of 968,000, but has three electoral votes. This is almost half of the votes of Kentucky, which has a population of 4.25 million. The apportionment of votes in the Electoral College is automatically readjusted along with the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives after every national census.
  
  

Electing the Electors

• Electors are chosen on a state basis. First, a political party selects who will comprise its nominees for the state's electors. This is an internal party process, and how it is done varies with the procedure selected by that state party organization. In some cases there is a vote, but in others it is simply a plum given out by the state party leaders. Then the national election takes place. In most states, there is a winner-takes-all system, where the winner of the election takes all the state's electoral votes. Ergo, the winner of the election sees his entire slate of Electoral College nominees appointed. However, it is important to realize that these elections are governed under state law, and can differ greatly from state to state. For example, in some states, winning the election means coming in first, but in others it means winning a majority. Maine and Nebraska give out their electoral votes on the basis of who won in each congressional district, and then the plus-two for the senators goes to the statewide winner. For example, in Maine, it is possible to lose the state and still pick up an electoral vote by winning more votes inside one of the state's congressional districts.
  
  

Elector Voting

• The electors gather in their respective capitals of their state on the Monday following the second Wednesday of December. Electors are not bound by law to actually vote for the presidential candidate for whom they were chosen. In theory, they can vote for whomever they chose, although in practice, this seldom happens, and it has never changed the outcome of an election. They then cast their electoral votes for president and vice president. Under the 12th Amendment of the Constitution, these are separate votes, so in theory, it is also possible for an elector to split his vote for president and vice president, choosing candidates from different tickets. In actual practice, this has never happened.