The Electoral College, America's unique way of picking her president, for it or against it.

You might want to know there's a plan to use the Electoral College to subvert the Electoral College.

It's a sneaky plan and to understand, remember that while it feels like citizens pick the president in one big election, they don't.

The 50 states pick the president.

Oh, and District of Columbia.

But not you, Puerto Rico. Come back when you're a state.

How the states come together and how they vote is what the electoral college is.

Each state gets votes proportional to her population plus two and is free to cast these votes however she wants.

Most look at how their citizens voted and give all their electoral college votes to the statewide winner.

But they don't have to.

A couple states cast their votes proportional-ish to their citizens' preferences.

But states are free to vote, however, including against the preferences of their citizens.

Let's make a note of that.

But back to this plus two, which is why some citizens really don't like the electoral college.

The plus two means the

states less populous produce preponderant presidential picking power per person. At the extremes,

some states get one vote per low 100,000 people, and some states one vote per high 100,000.

This is how the Electoral College sometimes picks a president that nationwide most citizens didn't,

because roughly 80% of the state's votes are given by population and 20% aren't.

This is on purpose. Dividing power between the levels of citizen, state, and federal is and was a central point of the Constitution.

It's a compromise institution.

So if you went back in time to when the states were about to finalize the deal, yelling,

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