Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections

摘要

When Americans vote for a President and Vice President, they actually vote for presidential electors, known collectively as the electoral college. It is these electors, chosen by the people, who elect the chief executive. The Constitution assigns each state a number of electors equal to the combined total of its Senate and House of Representatives delegations$ at present, the number of electors per state ranges from three to 55, for a total of 538. Anyone may serve as an elector, except for Members of Congress, and persons holding offices of Trust or Profit under the Constitution. In each presidential election year, a group (ticket or slate) of candidates for elector is nominated by political parties and other groups in each state, usually at a state party convention, or by the party state committee. It is these elector-candidates, rather than the presidential and vice presidential nominees, for whom the people vote in the election held on Tuesday after the first Monday in November (November 2, 2004). The report is a brief synopsis of how the electoral college works, written by an analyst in the Government and Finance Division of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress.