Legal Definitions - Electoral College

The Electoral College is a process used in the United States to indirectly elect the President and Vice President every four years. Instead of citizens directly voting for the candidates, they vote for "electors" who then cast their votes for the candidates. The number of electors each state has is based on the number of Representatives and Senators from that state, with a total of 538 electors in the country.

In order to win the election, a presidential candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes, which is 270 electoral votes. If there is a tie, then the members of the House of Representatives vote to elect the President and Vice President.

Before the election, each political party selects and nominates a single presidential and vice presidential candidate to represent them in the general election. When citizens vote for a candidate, they are actually voting for that candidate's slate of electors. The slate of electors that correspond with the political party receiving the majority of the votes within a particular state become that state's electors.

The Electoral College system seeks to maintain cohesiveness by ensuring a distribution of popular support across the country, incentivizing presidential candidates to pull together coalitions of states and regions, rather than to exacerbate regional differences.

For example, if a candidate were to win the popular vote in only a few heavily populated states, they could potentially win the election without having the support of the majority of the country. The Electoral College system helps to prevent this by requiring candidates to have support from a variety of states and regions in order to win.