Election 2024: What is the Electoral College and how will it select the president?

While millions of voters cast their ballots on Election Day, the count won’t be official until the Electoral College process is done.

The Electoral College is a group of electors who cast their vote for the president and vice president. Their votes are then counted by Congress, according to the National Archives.

While, the Constitution does not name the Electoral College exactly, but does refer to electors, meaning that if the country would do away with the process, a Constitutional amendment would be needed, the National Archives said. There have been more than 700 proposals to change the process and none have passed.

There are 538 electors and a majority — 270 votes — are needed to secure the win.

The 538 comes from the number of Representatives and Senators each state has. Washington, D.C. gets three electors. Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands do not have any despite being territories, The Hill reported.

Here is the state-by-state breakdown. States in bold are considered battleground states this year.

• Alabama - 9
• Alaska - 3
• Arizona - 11
• Arkansas - 6
• California - 54
• Colorado - 10
• Connecticut - 7
• Delaware - 3
• District of Columbia - 3
• Florida - 30
• Georgia - 16
• Hawaii - 4
• Idaho - 4
• Illinois - 19
• Indiana - 11
• Iowa - 6
• Kansas - 6
• Kentucky - 8
• Louisiana - 8
• Maine - 4
• Maryland - 10
• Massachusetts - 11
• Michigan - 15
• Minnesota - 10
• Mississippi - 6
• Missouri - 10
• Montana - 4
• Nebraska - 5
• Nevada - 6
• New Hampshire - 4
• New Jersey - 14
• New Mexico - 5
• New York - 28
• North Carolina - 16
• North Dakota - 3
• Ohio - 17
• Oklahoma - 7
• Oregon - 8
• Pennsylvania - 19
• Rhode Island - 4
• South Carolina - 9
• South Dakota - 3
• Tennessee - 11
• Texas - 40
• Utah - 6
• Vermont - 3
• Virginia - 13
• Washington - 12
• West Virginia - 4
• Wisconsin - 10
• Wyoming - 3

Each candidate has their own electors or slate, which are typically chosen by the candidate’s party, but the selection and responsibilities of those electors are spelled out by individual states.

Most states also have a “winner-take-all” system in place, meaning if a candidate wins the popular vote, they get all of the electors in the Electoral College. only two states, Maine and Nebraska have a type of proportional representation, meaning that each gets the proportional number of electors of the popular votes they won in each congressional district, CBS News explained.

When will the electors meet? It sounds confusing. They will cast their votes in the state they represent on the first Tuesday after the second Wednesday in December, the National Archives said. That means it will happen on Dec. 17, 2024.

But while the electors are slated for a specific candidate, they don’t have to. There is no law that prevents them from changing the vote from whom they were pledged to someone else. When that happens, they are called “faithless electors” but it is a rare occurrence. They typically follow through, voting for the person to which they were pledged, CBS News reported.

They vote separately for president and vice president then the Certificate of Vote is sent to Congress where it will be officially counted on Jan. 6, 2025.

The Vice President oversees the count as the President of the Senate as a formality. They will then declare the official winner of the two offices.

The President-elect will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

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