Dry Ice ERUPTIONS! How to Create Experimental Explosions! - Joe Genius. 2012 Primary Schedule. How the Electoral College Works" Do you remember voting for the president in a mock election in elementary school or junior high? Maybe you selected your candidate at random because you didn't really know the difference between the two (or care). Well, now you're older and wiser and know that who you vote for does make a difference. Or does it? Take the Electoral College, for instance. Every four years, on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November, millions of U.S. citizens go to local voting booths to cast a vote for the next president and vice president of their country. Their votes are recorded and counted, and the winner is declared -- unless the majority of Electoral College members vote for another candidate, of course [source: U.S. Truth is, the results of the popular vote are not guaranteed to stand because the presidential election is really decided by the votes of the Electoral College.
For some of us, the Electoral College process (and its outcome) may seem a bit shocking. The Electoral College : explainlikeimfive. ELI5: What stops democrats from registering as republicans en masse for the primary and voting for the weakest candidate, so as to give Obama an easy ride in November? : explainlikeimfive. How the Electoral College Works. The Trouble with the Electoral College. The Electoral College - Origin and History.
By William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election Administration In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that: was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable) believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St.
Origins of the Electoral College The Constitutional Convention considered several possible methods of selecting a president. One idea was to have the Congress choose the president. The First Design.