A lot of information is provided here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College Basics are: The United States Electoral College is a term used to describe the 538 Presidential Electors who meet quadrennially to cast the electoral votes for President and Vice President of the United States. Presidential Electors meet in their respective state capitol buildings (or in the District of Columbia) 41 days following "election day," never as a national body. At the 51 meetings, held on the same day, the Electors cast the electoral votes. It's all confusing, but the problem with it has shown that it is NOT representative of what the people ("by the people, for the people") want, as evidenced below: "The nature of the process and its complication have been critiqued, with its detractors raising several alternative means of electing the president. This issue was revisited following the Presidential Election of 2000 when Democratic candidate Al Gore won the majority of the national vote, but failed to win the majority of the Electoral College."

Basically, each state gets a certain number of electoral votes, based on population. Each state has two Senators and then Representatives based on population. The number of electoral votes is the sum of its Senators and Representatives. And D.C. gets three votes. This is why someone can lose the popular vote, but win the election. I believe its intent was to give every state some power. Otherwise, candidates could just cater to states like California, which has a large population, and essentially ignore Wyoming, which has a small population. In 2000, a candidate lost the popular vote, but won the election. That also happened in 1824, 1876, and 1888.

When the US was founded, there were no television, radio, or national newspapers. It could take months to travel from one state to another, and nobody could possibly run a campaign across the entire US. So they arranged that each state would send a number of representatives to a single meeting at which those representatives would choose a president; these representatives were known as the electoral college. Each state had as many electoral college representative as it had members of congress (Senators and Congressmen). Initially, these electors were just to use their common sense in choosing amongst potential presidents, who they would probably meet and talk to, along with electors from their home states. How the states chose their electors was left to the states discretion. Move forward a couple of centuries. The electoral college is still the same, but candidates for the electoral college now state which nationally known candidate they will support, and the states now mandate them to continue supporting that person as long as they are a candidate. Furthermore, all states bar one have decided to cast their electoral collage as a block vote: it is a contest between two "slates" of electors who are committed to their respective candidates. So the meeting of the electoral college has become a formality, though it still meets. Since most electors are legally committed to a candidate of one of the main parties, the outcome can be predicted as soon as the election for electors is over. The "winner takes all" system was invented to make it more important for candidates to visit and campaign in a state. If a state with 21 voted is split roughly evenly, on a proportional system, it will go either 10/11 or 11/10, and the candidate may not be worried by that one vote. But it is goes either 21/0 or 0/21, the candidates had better pay attention. Pf course, if one candidate wins by miles in some states, and the other wins by a narrow margin in others, the latter may end up winning the electoral college, and hence the presidency, while the other got more votes. This happened to Al Gore in 2000, when he lost to GW Bush who got fewer votes nationally. However, some form of clumping mechanism is necessary, even if not the electoral college as it is. Having seen the chaos in 2000 when just a few counties in Florida had to be recounted, what would it be like if to had to have a nationwide recount?

People of the states vote to the representative of the state and that person votes depending on what the people voted, but will sometimes rebel and vote for who they want anyway. Each state gets a certain amount of electoral votes, depending on how many people live there, so if a state with a high population votes for someone, but a small state votes for someone else, then there will be a big difference in the # of electoral votes.

very poor explanation, im alec. please, do some more research. in fact, simply google electoral college and find out really why it was instituted and how and why it is necessary for a republican democracy.