My grand daughter needs a school aged kid to explain to her?

because the vote actually goes to the electorial collage they can vote for someone else if they think the people of their state have made the wrong decision lol thats how geroge w. bush won

Ok first she has to know that the candidate with the most votes does not win the election. Instead, we have the electoral college.

Each state is given a number of "electors" or people that vote for us. This number is equal to its 2 senators + the number of representatives it has in Congress (This means states with more people have more "electors".)

In each state, we vote for a candidate. The candidate who gets the most votes wins ALL the electors for that state, even if they only win by 1 vote more than the other guy. Also known as winner takes all. (here lies the problem)

After election day, whichever Presidential candidate has over 270 elector votes (from the electors) is the winner. But wait!!

California has 55 electors

Texas has 34 electors

New York (31),

Florida (27)

Illinois (21),

Pennsylvania (21),

Ohio (20),

Michigan (17),

Georgia (15)

, New Jersey (15),

and North Carolina (15)

THATS 270 ELECTORS!!!! What about the other 39 states? A candidate could win these states, lose all the other ones, and still become president. He just has to win by 1 vote in each state to get all the electors. The people who voted for the other guy aren't counted.

So candidates focus on winning these states. And sometimes, they win without winning the popular vote!

***** THIS IS RIGHT TOO******

The final tally of electoral votes will decide the winner.

Lets Make it simple and do an example with 3 states.

im making up some numbers for this example:

Alabama has 50 residents and 2 electoral votes

Colorado has 90 residents and 3 electoral votes

Rhode Island has 40 residents and 2 electoral votes

A candidate could win populatiry vote due to the overall number of votes. However, the popular votes of each State decide which State wins - the candidate that has more popular votes of a State wins an electoral vote.

Take example of 3 States:

Candidate A:

CA: 500 (win)

NY: 300

TX: 200

-Total votes: 1,000

Candidate B:

CA: 200

NY: 400 (win)

TX: 300 (win)

-Total votes: 900

Candidate A has more overall popularity votes, but Candidate B won the popular votes of NY and TX, gaining 2 electoral votes, while Candidate only has 1 electoral vote.

Since American voting system judges winner by electoral votes, not overall popular votes, Candidate B wins. So technically, Candidate B wins the election, but Candidate A had more popular votes.

<EDIT>

Basically - each state will poll its citizens (popular vote) and the people will select a canditate that their state will vote for. even if 49 % of a state wants Vanilla, the state can only back one canidate so 100% of its voting power will go to Chocolate. Repeat 49 more times, once for each remaining state.

explain that each state has a different number of electoral votes, based on state population. Bigger states get more electoral votes.

The election is based on how many state electoral votes each canidate wins rather than on the overall vote count. Because of this, its possible to get enough electoral votes to win the election without actually winning the majority of the votes.

you two will probably have to discuss this on several occations leaving her time to digest the info.

the reason its seems so confusing is because its a dumb system based on arbitrary state lines (rather than the actual opinion of the country), that only makes sense if each state demands to independently select who it will vote for.

Good Luck to you both and dont forget to check the link below, its to wikipedia and has some interesting facts about the Bush 2000 election in which the popular vote winner actually lost the election (Gore).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_ele...

</>

i think i can explain a little better just be patient because theres alot going on here.

so lets start with some definition's

the popular vote is the final taly of every american vote.

this means that if 51% vote for Chocolate and 49% vote for Vanilla, Chocolate would win the popular vote and thus the election right? nope and heres why.

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

Each state will take a count of their residents votes. If the majority of say, Alabama voted for Chocolate, than Alabama's Electoral Votes would go to Chocolate.

Each state's number of electoral votes varies depending on the number of residents it has. Bigger states are allowed more Electoral Votes.

The final tally of electoral votes will decide the winner.

Lets Make it simple and do an example with 3 states.

im making up some numbers for this example:

Floridia has 40 residents and 2 electoral votes

Alabama has 60 residents and 3 electoral votes

Colorado has 80 residents and 4 electoral votes

an example where the popular vote differs from the election results follows:

imagine that 31 people from alabama vote for chocolate.

popular vote for chocolate = 31; total = 31

popular vote for vanilla = 29; total = 29

since chocolate wins alabama, all alabamas electoral votes go to Chocolate

electoral votes for chocolate = 3; total = 3

electoral votes for vanilla = 0; total = 0

moving along, lets say 46 people from Colorado vote for chocolate.

popular vote for chocolate = 46; total = 77

popular vote for vanilla = 34; total = 63

since chocolate wins colorado, all colorados electoral votes go to Chocolate

electoral votes for chocolate = 4; total = 7

electoral votes for vanilla = 0; total = 0

at this point chocolate is winning the popular vote as well as the election, but wait, we have a last min submittion from floridia.

strange as it seems, every single vote from floridia is a vote for vanilla. one would think that this gives vanilla a huge advantage due to the fact it has only lost by a few votes in the other 2 states but lets look at the numbers.

popular vote for chocolate = 0; total = 77

popular vote for vanilla = 40; total = 103

since vanilla wins floridia, all floridias electoral votes go to vanilla

electoral votes for chocolate = 0; total = 7

electoral votes for vanilla = 2; total = 2

so the final count of our mock election leaves tasty vanilla with 103 popular votes. 103 individual citizens vote for vanilla, which is 26 votes more than yummy chocolate gets.

however since the election is determined by the number of electoral votes each canidate recieves, we must look at those numbers and clearly chocolate recieves the win with 7 electoral votes. thats 5 more electoral votes than vanilla despite losing the popular vote. this kind of result is 100% valid with our current voting system. the only difference is the scale of the numbers.

When the founding fathers wrote the constitution, they decided that the majority of the population was not capable of properly deciding the next president. so, they created the electoral college. each state has a certain number of votes for the electoral college. usually, each state takes whatever the popular vote was as the electoral vote, but they have the power to overturn the popular vote. since there are only 270-something votes for the electoral college and hundreds of millions across the nation, it is possible to have more popular votes than electoral.

ok, so explain to her that say she is at the music awards or awards for movies.

so say Miley Cyrus, Hilary Duff, and Britney Spears are all running for the best song of the year.

People believe that Miley Cyrus will win because she is the most popular among the three.

Once the voting has taken place Hilary Duff won.

so the prediction was Miley, but hialry ended up winning.

sorry i hope this helps i have no idea how to explain it any better lol.

because there are many people who like or have liked that person who wins the popular vote, but there are better ways and ideas that can be brought by someone different , who wins the election

Winning by popular vote means that people really like you, but it doesn't mean people will vote for you just yet, hence you can still lose.