1. What is the difference between popular vote and electoral vote?

2. Which type of vote elects a president?

College bound?

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Electoral College system - and now have to ask

By Matthew Cooper

Q. Let’s start with the Electoral College. Why did the Founders set up this system?

A. They were divided. Some wanted Congress to pick the President. Others wanted the citizens to choose directly. The Electoral College was the compromise.

Q. So these electors, who are they?

A. States decide how they’re chosen, but usually they are loyalists chosen by their parties. Five hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes are distributed among the states - one for each member of the House and Senate. (The District of Columbia gets three.) An elector is chosen for every electoral vote available to a state. Electors can’t hold federal office. Some celebrities have been electors, like Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow. Amazingly, the US Constitution does not require that electors be popularly chosen - only that the states come up with some method for appointing them.

Q. When and how do they vote?

A. On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December - we’re not making this up - electors gather, usually in state capitols, and vote.

Q. Can electors vote how they please?

A. Twenty-six states have no requirement that electors vote in accordance with the popular vote. Nineteen states and D.C. mandate that they vote in accordance with the popular vote, but there’s no penalty if an elector fails to do so. Only five states have penalties for deviating from the popular vote. But in most of those states, the sanctions are relatively minor – in Oklahoma, for instance, it’s a $1,000 fine. But it’s worth nothing that no elector has ever been prosecuted for being unfaithful. Throughout U.S. history, only nine electors out of some 18,000 have violated their pledges. It’s going to be hard to find one who’s going to break his or hers. Frank Straka, a Bush-Cheney elector from Arizona, told TIME, for example, that he wouldn’t switch even if Gore won the popular vote nationally. “It’s like the playoffs,” he says. “One team may score more runs, but if they don’t win the four games, they lose.”

Q. Will we know how the electors voted?

A. The Constitution says they shall submit their votes “sealed” to the president of the Senate, but generally the balloting has been quite open. We’ll know for sure when the Senate president reads the results before a joint session of Congress.

Q. Wait. The Vice President reads the results?

A. Yes. He remains the president of the Senate until Jan. 20, when a new President takes office. Vice President Richard Nixon, in 1961, had the dubious honor of announcing his own defeat. Martin Van Buren, in 1837, and George Bush, in 1989, had the pleasure of announcing their own victories.

Q. What if no candidate gets an electoral majority?

A. It goes to the House, which chooses among the top three electoral vote getters.

Q. And is it the new House or the old House that makes the choice?

A. It’s the new House. When it takes office, it is required to immediately begin picking a new President if there’s a deadlock in the Electoral College.

Q. So the House just votes?

A. No. It gets weirder. Rather than having individual members cast ballots, each state delegation gets one vote. Tiny Rhode Island has as much clout as California.

Q. Does the District of Columbia vote in the House?

A. Nope. The Constitution is pretty clear that only state delegations can vote.

Q. What if a delegation is evenly split between parties?

A. If a candidate doesn’t win a state’s majority, then the state is listed as “divided” and its vote is forfeited.

Q. Do you need 26 state-delegation votes to win, or just a simple plurality?

A. You need 26 states.

Q. What if no candidate gets 26?

A. It goes into more balloting, and horse-trading for votes. Some members may be pressed to switch to the way their states, their districts or the national majority voted. Some may be swayed by the prospect of an ambassadorship or a big Cabinet job.

Q. The Vice President is picked by the Senate, right? And he can be of a different party from the President?

A. Yes! The Constitution says the Senate must pick from the two highest Vice-presidential vote getters in the Electoral College.