The U.S. Constitution specifies that the President and Vice President of the United States are to be chosen every four years by a small group of people who are individually referred to as “presidential electors.” The electors are collectively referred to as the “Electoral College.”

The Constitution specifies that each state is entitled to one member of the Electoral College for each of its U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators. Today, there are a total of 538 electoral votes in the Electoral College. This total corresponds to the 435 U.S. Representatives from the 50 states plus the 100 U.S. Senators from the 50 states plus the three members of the Electoral College to which the District of Columbia became entitled under the 23rd Amendment (ratified in 1961). Every 10 years, the 435 U.S. Representatives are reapportioned among the states in accordance with the latest federal census, thereby automatically reapportioning the membership of the Electoral College among the states.

Members of the Electoral College are chosen by each state and the District of Columbia on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in presidential election years. Each political party nominates its own candidates (typically long-standing party activists) for the position of presidential elector.

The 538 members of the Electoral College cast their votes for President and Vice President in meetings held in the 50 state capitals and the District of Columbia in mid-December of presidential election years. If all 538 electors are appointed, 270 electoral votes (i.e., a majority of 538 members of the Electoral College) are required to elect the President and the Vice President.

The three North Dakota members of the Electoral College met on December 15, 2000, in Bismarck to cast their votes for the Bush-Cheney ticket. Gov. John Hoeven (left) observes former Gov. Ed Schafer put his signature to ballot for Electoral College. The other two electors are former state Senator Bryce Streibel of Fressenden and former Lieutenant Governor Rosemarie Myrdal.    more

The three Wyoming members of the Electoral College met in December 1996 in Cheyenne to cast their votes for the Robert Dole for President and Jack Kemp for Vice President.

The table below shows the distribution of electoral votes among the 51 jurisdictions that appoint members of the Electoral College. Because each state has two Senators and at least one Representative, no state has fewer than three members of the Electoral College. The states with the most members of the Electoral College are California (55), Texas (34), and New York (31). There are 13 low-population states with three or four members of the Electoral College. The average number of members of the Electoral College per state is about 11.

The date for the meeting of the Electoral College is established by federal election law (United States Code. Title 3, chapter 1, section 7). In 2004, the designated day for the meeting of the Electoral College was Monday, December 13. This statute was enacted in 1934 after the 20th Amendment changed the date for the presidential inauguration from March 4 to January 20.

The people have the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to vote for U.S. Representatives. The 17th Amendment (ratified in 1913) gave the people the right to vote for U.S. Senators (who were elected by state legislatures under the original Constitution). The people, however, have no federal constitutional right to vote for President or Vice President or for their state’s members of the Electoral College. Instead, the Constitution (Article II, section 1, clause 2) provides:

As the U.S. Supreme Court observed in the 1892 case of McPherson v. Blacker:

In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore reiterated the principle that the people have no federal constitutional right to vote for President or Vice President or for their state’s members of the Electoral College..

The Constitution’s delegation of power to the states to choose the manner of selecting their members of the Electoral College is unusually unconstrained. It contrasts significantly with the limitations contained in the Constitution on state power over the manner of conducting congressional elections (Article II, section 4, clause 1).

In a 1919 case involving a state statute entitled “An act granting to women the right to vote for presidential electors,” the Maine Supreme Judicial Court wrote (In re Opinion of the Justices):

Certificate of Ascertainment showing that Wyoming cast its three electoral votes for the Bush-Cheney ticket because that state received more popular votes in Wyoming than any other state.