The electoral college is a process established in the constitution as a compromise between election of the president by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The electoral college process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for president & vice president, & the counting of electoral votes by congress. Their are five reasons for retaining the electoral college despite its lack of impressive democratic origin & history; all are practical reasons, not liberal or conservative reasons. Our country would be much better off if we kept the electoral college, rather than choosing the president just based on the popular vote.

The electoral college is widely regarded as an anachronism, a non democratic method of choosing a president that ought to be overruled by declaring the candidate who recieves the most popular votes the winner. The advocates of this position are correct in arguing that the electoral college methodis not democratic in a modern sense, it is the electors who elect the president, not the people. When you vote for a presidential candidate, youre actually voting for a slate of electors.

The electoral college consists of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the president. Your states entitled alottment of electors equals the number of its congressional delegation: one for each member in the house of representatives plus 2 for each senator. Each candidate running for president in your state has his or her own group of electors. The electors are generally chosen by the candidates political party, but state laws vary on how the electors are selected & what their responsibilities are.

The electoral college is good because it resores some of the weight in the political balance that large states lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the senate decreed in constitution. The elctoral college also avoids the problem of elections in which no candidate recieves a majority of the votes cast. The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes induces the candidates to focus their campaign efforts on the toss up states. Votes in the toss up states are more likely to pay attention to the campaign- to really listen to the competing candidates- knowing that they are going to decide the election.

Each party selects a slate of electors trusted to vote for each party's nominee... however, it is entirely possible that the winner of the electoral vote will not win the national populr vote. Yet that has happened in 2000, when gorge had more popular votes than bush yet fewer electoral votes, but that was the first time since 1888.

It can be argued that the electoral college method of selecting the president may turn off potential voters for a candidate who has no intention or hope of carrying their state- democrats in texas, for example, or republicans in california. Knowing their vote will have no effect, they have less incentive to pay attention to the campaign thn they would have if the president were picked by popular vote. But of course no voter's vote swings a national election, and in spite of that, about 1/2 the eligible american population did vote in 2012's election. Voters in presidential elections are people who want to express a political preference rather than people who think a single vote may decide an entire election.