Ah, Election Day, when Americans everywhere cast their ballot for the next President of the United States.

Except, not really. Americans don't directly vote for President.

So what's happening on Election Day then?

It's a bit complicated because of something called the Electoral College.

To keep things simple for now, think of the Electoral College as the collection of 538 votes that determine who the President of the United States will be.

Why 538? Because that's the number of senators, 100, plus the number of representatives, 438 in Congress.

Why are there 438 representatives in Congress? Stop asking so many questions right now. We're trying to keep this simple.

These 538 votes in the Electoral College aren't given to the citizens directly, but are instead divided among the states.

So how does the Electoral College give out the votes? Each state, no matter how populous or not, gets three votes to start. The remaining votes are given out roughly in proportion to the population of the states. The more people the state has, the more votes it gets. Here's a map of the United States showing the voting power each state has by making one hexagon equal to one electoral college vote for president. Because electoral college votes mostly, though not completely,

scale with population, it's also a map of where people live with a bonus given to the smaller states to make them a bit bigger than they would otherwise be. In early November, when citizens

go to the polls, they aren't voting for president directly, but they're really telling their state

how they want it to use its electoral votes.

48 of the 50 states give all their electoral college votes to the candidate who wins a majority

in their state.

Take Florida, for example, which has 29 electoral college votes.

If a candidate wins a majority, no matter how small that majority, he gets all the votes.

So the path to the White House is clear.

Win enough

majorities and enough states to get more than half of the Electoral College votes and you get to sit at the big desk. That wasn't so complicated, you say? Well, there were a few details left out. The Electoral College loves states, but what about the 11 million Americans who don't live in a state? What happens to their vote and where are these people hiding? There are about 600,000 in the District of Columbia, an area set aside specifically not to be a state so that the capital of the country would be free of local politics. For most of the United States history, people living in the district didn't get to vote for president. Then, in 1964, the Constitution was amended to give D.C. the same number of votes as the least populous state, Wyoming. So the Electoral College likes D.C. But you know who it doesn't like? The territories. The often forgotten Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Northern Mariana Islands get no votes from the Electoral College because they aren't states and they don't have a special constitutional amendment to recognize them. Which is a bit odd, considering they're part of the United States and everyone who lives there as a citizen, so for most practical purposes they're just like DC, and 4.4 million people live in the territories. That might not sound like a lot, but it's more than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and Delaware combined. But still, no votes from the electoral college do they get. The whole situation with territories is extra strains when you consider the final group of Americans who don't live in the states,

the 6.3 million Americans who live abroad. If you're a United States citizen who moves to a foreign country, you can usually send a postal vote to the last state that you resided in. But if you move within the United States to one of its territories, you lose your right to vote for president as long as you live there, making these the only spots on the whole earth where Americans are not allowed to vote for president.

Actually, they're the only spots in the whole universe because American astronauts are allowed to vote from space. The last bit of electoral college complication is the weirdest and has to do with the votes themselves. The state of Florida and all the others don't really give votes to a candidate. That's just a simplified way to think about it, because the reality of the situation is odd. What citizens are voting for on Election Day

is a group of electors appointed by the political parties who choose the president on the citizens' behalf.

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