How does the Electoral College work?
The way it works is every state gets a number of delegates equal to how many congressmen that they have and everybody has two senators, so it's 535, plus we've given three votes to the District of Columbia, so it's 538 total, that's how many votes are in the electoral college. It's divied up to the states based on how many representatives that they have in Congress. So when I go to vote, here in California it's in February, and I want to vote for a Presidential candidate, the name of the candidate will be on the ballot, but I'm actually voting for the electoral people to go to the college in January after the election. Remember, the election's in November, the Electoral College doesn't meet until right after the New Year - January something - it's a set date every year, and sometimes it's no problem (we already know who it's going to be and then the votes are very clear), but sometimes there's a very close vote, because the states have elected different presidential candidates and it's actually sometimes decided by the House of Representatives and it makes the final decision. But that's in rare cases, usually it's clear how many states have already pledged their delegates to vote for a certain candidate. That's the interesting thing, there's so much trust in U.S. Government, because we say they should vote for the ones the voter voted for, but they have the right to change their mind and vote for who they want. If they get to the Electoral College and change their mind and they say "Oh, I don't like who the voters picked", then they can change their mind, but they're supposed to pledge to vote for the candidate that the public chose at the election. But there's no - in fact, if there's a tie or a very close election, it frees them from all obligations.
