This article is part of A Kid’s Guide to the Election, a collection of stories about the 2024 presidential election for readers ages 8 to 14, created by The New York Times for Kids. This section appears in The Times’s print edition on the last Sunday of every month.
Every four years, one topic dominates conversations: the Electoral College. It may sound like an educational institution, but it’s actually the unique system used in the United States to elect presidents. To be honest, it can be quite confusing! Here’s a straightforward explanation of how it all works.
In a typical school election for class president, the process is simple: the candidate with the most votes wins. However, the presidential election is much more complex. When citizens cast their votes, their selections don’t go directly to candidates like Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, they go through the Electoral College, a system where representatives from each state elect the president.
So, what exactly is the Electoral College? It consists of hundreds of electors who represent the voters in their respective states. These electors are often involved in politics, such as activists or volunteers, and you can think of them as team captains who represent people from their states—like Pennsylvanians, Coloradans, or Wisconsinites. Each state has a different number of electors based on its population, and each elector casts one electoral vote.
On Election Day, voters—like your parents—cast their ballots in their states. Then, state officials count all the votes. Here’s the twist: the candidate who receives the most votes in a state gets all of that state’s Electoral College votes. The only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which have different rules. For instance, if a candidate wins 51 percent of the votes in New York, they receive all 28 of its electoral votes.
How Many Votes Does Each State Get?
The number of electoral votes per state varies based on its population. States with larger populations, like California, have more electors—California has 54 electoral votes, while Texas has 40. Smaller states, such as Alaska and Delaware, have only three electoral votes each. When you tally all the electoral votes from the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., the total comes to 538.
The Electoral College means that presidential candidates don’t have to focus on winning every single vote across the country. They only need to secure enough states to reach 270 electoral votes, which is just over half of 538. In most states, electors are legally bound to vote for the candidate their state chooses. Once the votes are counted, the winners in each state are confirmed, and on December 17, the electors will officially cast their votes. Congress will then count and confirm the results on January 6, with the new president inaugurated on January 20.
Why Do We Have the Electoral College?
The Electoral College was established because the founding fathers of America had differing opinions on how to elect a president. Some believed only Congress members should vote, while others wanted everyone in the country to have a say. There was also concern that states with larger populations would hold too much power in the election process. To address these disagreements, they created the Electoral College as a compromise.
However, not everyone agrees that this 237-year-old system is fair. Critics argue that it gives too much influence to voters in a few “swing states” and believe that the candidate receiving the most votes nationwide should win. This has not always been the case: in 2016, Hillary Clinton received nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump but lost the election with only 232 electoral votes. While some politicians and activists have suggested changing this system, it remains in place, shaping how American democracy functions and how the next president will be elected this November.
Ready to Get Involved?
Now that you understand how it works, print out this Electoral College map and fill it in on election night!
Instructions: Grab two colored pencils—red for Donald Trump and blue for Kamala Harris. When a candidate wins a state, color it in on the map. Then, mark the same number of squares in the vote counter, column by column. (Remember, Maine and Nebraska split their votes, so check the news for those numbers.) The first candidate to reach the centerline or 270 electoral votes wins.
Read More in A Kid’s Guide to the Election.
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