In 2000, Gore bested Bush by more than 500,000 votes, but Bush won 271 electoral votes. | REUTERS How does Electoral College work?

The devil’s in the details and that’s certainly true for the Electoral College, the grand compromise America’s founders made between having presidential elections based on a popular vote and one based on congressional representation.

On Nov. 6, voters will throw their support behind a slate of electors who then cast their votes for president and vice president, based on which candidates won the popular vote in their state. Each state gets one elector for every member of state’s congressional delegation.


Electors are chosen largely on their participation in and loyalty to their state’s Republican or Democratic parties. Since the college’s earliest days, more than 99 percent of electors have cast their votes for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who win their state’s popular vote.

But just in case an elector tries to go rogue, for example, 27 states have legally bound their electors to support the popular vote, while 24 states don’t have such pledges. Yes, that adds to 51, because the District of Columbia boasts three electors.

The winner-takes-all system in 48 states and the District of Columbia means the candidate with the most votes in a state will be awarded all of its electors’ votes — the all-important currency in the race to the White House. For the 2012-20 presidential elections, the magic number to win the White House is 270 electoral votes, which is half of the 538-member college plus one.

(Only Maine and Nebraska observe a method in which the majority of the state’s electors cast their votes based on the popular vote in specific congressional districts, instead of the statewide total).

This year, the electors will meet Dec. 17 to record their votes, which are sent to the National Archives for processing before they are tallied in a joint session of Congress. Vice President Joe Biden will announce the electoral college tally, and then the winners take their oaths of office Jan. 20.

That time-tested process hasn’t won many fans, however.

According to the Federal Register, more than 700 proposals in Congress in 200 years have pushed for a change in or elimination of the Electoral College. In that time, it has been the topic of Constitutional amendments more than any other national issue.

On Friday, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) introduced legislation to amend the Constitution to give 29 additional electoral votes to the popular vote winner. The bonus electoral votes would give a voice to states that usually aren’t targeted by candidates as battleground states, and it would likely not allow the popular vote loser to win the presidency, Israel said.

That’s no easy feat. To amend the Constitution, two-thirds of the House and the Senate must approve and three-fourths of the states must ratify the changes.

The potential — unlikely but not impossible — that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney end up in a 269-269 electoral vote tie wouldn’t make the process any more popular. In that case, the Constitution says the House, likely Republican, votes for the president, while the Senate, likely Democratic, votes for the vice president.

President Romney and Vice President Joe Biden? Thank the Electoral College.

In three presidential elections in U.S. history, the popular vote winner turned out to be the electoral vote loser.

More than 250,000 votes put Democrat Samuel Tilden in the popular vote lead, but after a congressional compromise in 1876, Republican Rutherford Hayes won the White House with a razor-thin Electoral College win, 185-184.

Republican Sen. Benjamin Harrison trailed Democratic President Grover Cleveland by more than 94,000 votes in the 1888 presidential election, but Harrison became president after the Electoral College split 233-168 in his favor.

In 2000, Vice President Al Gore bested Texas Gov. George W. Bush by more than 500,000 votes nationally, but Bush won 271 electoral votes to ride into the White House.

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