WASHINGTON (AP) — It's time for America to get up to speed again on the Electoral College, that oddball way the nation selects its president every four years. 
 
 Here's how and why the U.S. does it like this: 
 
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 ORIGINS 
 
 The Electoral College was devised at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a compromise meant to strike a balance between those who wanted popular elections for president and those who wanted no public input. Alexander Hamilton wrote, "If the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent." 
 
 At the time, the country had just 13 states, and the founders were worried about one state exercising outsized influence. Small states didn't want states with big populations to dominate. Southern states with slaves who couldn't vote worried that Northern states would have a louder voice. There were concerns that people in one state wouldn't know much about candidates from other states. The logistics of a national election were daunting. The thinking was that if candidates had to win multiple states rather than just the popular vote, they would have to attract broader support. 
 
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 HOW IT WORKS 
 
 The Electoral College is a process, not a place, the National Archives likes to say. 
 
 The system has been tweaked over the years, but the gist endures. The president is selected by a "college" of 538 electors from the states. Each state gets as many electoral votes as it has members of Congress, and the District of Columbia gets three. To be elected president, the winner must get at least half the total plus one — or 270 electoral votes. Most states give all their electoral votes to whichever candidate wins that state's popular vote. 
 
 The electors never gather as one group: They will meet in their states on Monday to cast their votes. Congress will count their ballots on Jan. 6 and announce the winner. 
 
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 WHO ARE THE ELECTORS? 
 
 Electors are chosen by each party, and typically are party insiders who can be trusted to vote for their candidate. 
 
 Among this year's electors: Ex-President Bill Clinton, who as a New Yorker will be voting for his wife. Also, a sprinkling of governors and mayors, and hundreds of local and state party stalwarts from all walks of life. 
 
 Kirk Shook, 32, is an Athens, Georgia, schoolteacher voting as a Republican elector. He says being chosen for the honor was on his "political bucket list," but he's been bombarded with nearly 50,000 emails lobbying him to vote one way or another. John Padilla, 59, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a retired Bernalillo County firefighter who will be stepping up for Democrats. 
 
 The National Archives says electors can be state elected officials, state party leaders or people in the state who have a personal or political affiliation with their party's presidential candidate. 
 
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 GOING ROGUE 
 
 It rarely happens. 
 
 According to the National Archives, more than 99 percent of electors through U.S. history have voted for the candidate who won their state. 
 
 In many states, electors aren't legally required to support that person. And no elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged. 
 
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 SPLIT DECISIONS 
 
 The 2016 election is the fifth time the electoral system has delivered a split verdict, with one candidate winning the popular vote and another the presidency. 
 
 Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by more than 2.6 million votes nationwide, but Trump's count in the Electoral College stands at 306 to Clinton's 232. 
 
 The last divergent election was the hotly contested 2000 race between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. 
 
 Gore won the popular vote; Bush didn't clinch his 271-electoral vote victory until five weeks after the election, when the Supreme Court stopped a recount in Florida. 
 
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 THE PROS 
 
 A lot has changed since the Electoral College system was established, making many of the original reasons for its existence outdated: The U.S. now manages to run national elections quite well. Voters nationwide have no shortage of information about candidates. Slavery no longer exists. But there still are concerns that small states and rural areas would be ignored in favor of those with bigger populations if the race hinged strictly on the popular vote. 
 
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 THE CONS 
 
 In 1967, a commission of the American Bar Association recommended that the Electoral College system be scrapped, finding it to be "archaic, undemocratic, complex, ambiguous and dangerous." Fifty years later, critics are still complaining that the system results in huge swaths of the country being ignored while candidates focus on a dozen or so battleground states. 
 
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 DENVER -- A U.S. District Court judge shot down a lawsuit filed by two Democratic members of Colorado’s Electoral College who want to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton. 
 
 It might sound counterintuitive, but it is part of a last-ditch effort to elect someone other than Donald Trump. 
 
 Trump lost the popular vote by the largest margin of any winning president -- 2,639,000 votes -- but won enough states to give him 306 Electoral College votes, according to CNN. He only needed 270 votes to win. 
 
 Activists are hoping to block Trump from taking office by convincing 270 electors to unite behind a compromise candidate. They would need to persuade all 232 Democratic electors as well as 38 Republican electors to vote for someone else. 
 
 "Because more national electors are Republicans, they assume the alternative would have to be a Republican," the Colorado Independent said. "And even as Democrats they are OK with that because it’s likely a Republican they might choose ... would be better than Trump." 
 
 The move would be unprecedented, but not unconstitutional, experts say. 
 
 However, Colorado and 28 other states require members of the Electoral College to vote for whoever won the popular vote in their state. 
 
 Two of Colorado's nine electors, former State Sen. Polly Baca and math teacher Bob Nemanich, filed a lawsuit against the state challenging that requirement. 
 
 Lawyers for the state called the lawsuit a "corrupt and illegal conspiracy" to block Trump. 
 
 At a hearing Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Daniel struck down the lawsuit and called it a "political stunt." 
 
 So-called faithless electors might be subject to fines or could be disqualified for casting an invalid vote and be replaced by a substitute elector. 
 
 "The Supreme Court has not specifically ruled on the question of whether pledges and penalties for failure to vote as pledged may be enforced under the Constitution," according to a federal government website. "No elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged." 
 
 Members of the Electoral College will meet in their respective state capitals on Dec. 19 to cast their official votes. 
 
 There's a hearing in state court Tuesday to help the secretary of state determine what to do if the electors don't follow the law.
– With days to go until 538 electors officially decide on the next US president, the "faithless" are hard at work to ensure that person is not Donald Trump. Activists need to convince 232 Democratic electors plus 38 Republican electors to vote for someone else. That person would presumably be a Republican, not Hillary Clinton, as there are more Republican national electors overall, but activists hope Democrats feel anyone would be better than Trump, reports KDVR. Is such a scenario at all likely? It would certainly be a break with tradition. Throughout US history, more than 99% of electors have voted for the candidate who won their state, which is legally required in 29 states, reports the AP. However, "no elector has ever been prosecuted for failing to vote as pledged." It wouldn't be unconstitutional as electors are only required to "meet in their respective states and vote by ballot," writes Columbia law professor David Pozen at the New York Times. Indeed, he argues electors have an "obligation to preserve the country and the Constitution" and should stand against what might be perceived as a threat. At the Washington Post, EJ Dionne Jr. recommends electors think long and hard before making their decision. "Our tradition—for good reason—tells you that your job is to ratify the state-by-state outcome of the election," he writes. "The question is whether Trump, Vladimir Putin and, perhaps, Clinton’s popular-vote advantage give you sufficient reason to blow up the system." The AP lays out the pros and cons of doing away with the Electoral College system altogether, stressing it was developed at a time when voters may not have had the opportunity to hear from a candidate out of state. Some 230 years later, that's no longer an issue. But that's a conversation for a later date, Charles Lane writes at the Post. Trump and Clinton knew they needed to win the Electoral College to become president. Those now complaining about Trump becoming president despite Clinton leading him by 2.6 million votes nationwide might as well complain that the NFL on Sunday "awarded the Tennessee Titans a win over the Denver Broncos because they scored more points, even though the Broncos got more total yards." Electors vote on Monday.