Some people may not be aware that United States citizens don't vote directly for their President. Instead, they vote for electors who do the actual electing! Both Democrats and Republicans in each state choose a group of electors-as many electors as the state has members of Congress and the Senate. When the citizens vote in November, that is called the popular vote. Whichever party's candidate wins the popular vote in a state also wins the votes of all the state's electors. In December, the winning party's electors go to their state capital to officially vote for their candidate.

This Electoral College has been around for over 200 years. It sometimes gets confusing though. In our last election, Al Gore got a half million more votes than George Bush, but Gore lost the election. Does that make any sense? If more people voted for him, why didn't he become President? Well, the answer is simple: George Bush won more electoral votes (or states) than Al Gore. Electoral votes decide who will become President.

Check out the map below. Notice that some states have more electoral votes than others. So what decides how many electoral votes are given to each state? Well, the bigger the state's population, the more electoral votes they get. The number of electoral votes can change too. Every ten years the United States government counts its population. Then votes are taken away or added to each state. The minimum amount of votes is 3.