I'll try. The US President is chosen by the electoral college. This college is made up of electors from each state, who are chosen by the people. The states with the greatest population have the most electoral votes. You can see the number of electoral votes each state has here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Electoral_map.svg On voting day, when Americans cast their ballots, they are given a list of the presidential candidates to choose from. However, the winner is not chosen simply by which candidate gets the most total votes throughout the country, but rather, by which candidate gets the most *electoral* votes. For example, the state I live in, Tennessee, has 11 electoral votes. On election day 2008, let's assume that John McCain receives 60% of the votes in TN, while Barack Obama receives 40%. Since McCain received the majority of the votes, he wins Tennessee's 11 electoral votes. This continues in each state. Usually, the electoral vote winner and popular vote winner are the same, but in rare cases, like in 2000 with Gore v. Bush, the person with the most popular votes will lose. It is confusing, but it helps maintain our system of checks and balances. The presidency is the only term chosen this way.

The system is explained very well here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election

Hell we don't understand it. How can we explain it.

Brits can't understand American football any better than USAnians can understand the rules of rugby or cricket. So what makes you think you can understand our politics? It's a thing that is not supposed to happen. I live with a former Brit in Chicago who has tried to get clear on US politics for the past twelve years. He's given up and gone on to an in-depth study of the third reich because it makes more sense. Thanks for your interest but you can save yourself a lot of frustration and try to do something that makes more sense, like Chinese calculus.

The U.S. president is chosen by the electoral college, a bunch of communist neo-tards who decide that the common people are not capable of selecting leaders for themselves. The votes of the people are merely a side effect. In at least 2 previous elections the popular vote was one by one candidate but the electoral college selected the other candidate to be president. Its a flawed system that needs to be thrown out.

I know, and the Democrats have compounded it even further with their super-delegates and such. Heck, a lot of us don't understand all of it either.

Some things are just not meant to be understood!