America votes for President, but not really

Washington: The US Constitution, which established a landmark in democracy 220 years ago, did not grant Americans the basic right of voting directly for the President. That job goes to the electoral college, which also is not mentioned in the constitution.

"Electoral college" is the informal name of the gathering of people the constitution called electors, chosen by voters to cast their states' votes for president. Voters will elect the electors in Tuesday's balloting.

Today, 270 electoral votes are required to elect a president—one more than half the 538 members of the electoral college. That number comes from the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 100 senators and three electors for Washington, D.C. The national capital has no vote in the House or the Senate but was given electoral representation in 1961 with the 23rd Amendment to the constitution.

Almost all the states conduct their vote counts under winner-takes-all rules. That means they award all their electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most votes.

This year, electors meet in each state on December 15 to vote for president and vice president. The ballots are sent to the president of the Senate, Vice President Dick Cheney. On January 6, a joint session of Congress convenes to count the electors' ballots and proclaim the president who will replace George W. Bush at noon, January 20.

In devising that system, the men who became known as the Founding Fathers made one of the many compromises of the Constitution. They borrowed from Europe's Holy Roman Empire the concept of "electors," German princes who elected the German king, and gave each state the right to select electors equal to its combined number of representatives and senators.

The number of a state's representatives depends on its population. The constitution assigned each state two senators. The group of electors became known in the early 1800s as the electoral college, and that term was written into law in 1845.

The constitution is largely silent on electors' qualifications other than to bar members of Congress or any "person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States."