Video: What Is an Electoral College for Presidential Elections?

This Season: Tailgating; New Year, New You; Tax Time

The electoral college for presidential elections is a body of electors that makes the final decision on who will be elected president based on how the population in the state votes. Discover how the number of electors for each state is based on the number of congress members for that state with information from an experienced political blogger in this free video on elections.

Comments

Video Transcript

Hi. My name is Bill Scher with LiberalOasis.com. What is the Electoral College for presidential elections? Well it is a body of electors that actually makes the final decision who is going to be elected president of the United States. The presidential election does not directly elect the president but elects the electors of the electoral college who then meet separately to make that final determination. The decision tends to be in sync with what the popular vote is because the electors are generally pledged to vote for a particular candidate although they are not bound to do so. And there are occasionally unfaithful electors that go against the people's wishes in that state. Currently there are five hundred and thirty-eight members in the electoral college. That's because each state gets the number of electoral college that is equivalent to the number of house representatives that they have and plus two senators, because every state has two senators. So that means that there are certain states that have more electoral college members than others. New York has more than Wyoming for example, but Wyoming has more representation per capita than the larger states like New York do. So it's generally a system that gives extra weight to smaller less populated states than larger more populated states. Which was by design so larger more urban states did not have undue dominance over smaller states. Washington, DC does not have full representation in the United States Congress. They don't have any senators and as of this moment they don't have full representation in the House although that may change very shortly. This is being taped in February 2009. They're still given three electoral college members as if they were the smallest state in the union like Wyoming or Vermont.

Follow eHow: Follow @eHow

What Is an Electoral College for Presidential Elections?

Comments

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos