As you all know, every four years there is an election. The main candidates come from the Republican and Democratic Parties, but a few are on the sidelines. They can often play a role as to who wins the election, because they take certain votes away. Not necessarily, but that is the proposed idea by many people.
So you go into the voting booth and when people ask who you voted for you would say, oh I voted for Bush or I voted for Kerry. But you didn't really vote for them. You see, on some states ballots there are 4 people named above or in the same box as the presidential candidate. They are the electors that make up the electoral college. They are the ones you are really voting for.
The popular vote is often counted and done by the end of the election day. They pronounce the winner and deem him President. But the electoral votes could change all of that, hince the drama between the Bush and Gore election. Bush did not win the popular vote, but he won the electoral vote, which made him become the President. This election usually takes place several weeks after the real election day, I believe this day is January 6th.
Now I didn't know much about the electoral college until just recently when we started learning about it in American Government, and I found it quite interesting. It gives the smaller states a chance to speak up and not get ruled out by all of the big states, like Texas, California, and New York. The downside is that it could make a complete mess of the election, like in 2000.
I think if there's one thing that should be changed about the electoral college, it's that if you vote Republican then all of the electors should have to vote Republican, and not any other way. Same if you were a Democrat or Independent. I don't see it fair to go against the vote of the people, because it is your job to support whatever candidate you are with. But our Founding Fathers never made it this way, so people can get by with voting for someone else because they do not have to vote the way you did. Interesting huh?
While most states have the all or nothing method of whichever candidate gets the most electoral votes in that state, they get all the votes, some states do it differently. I believe that Nebraska and Maine have an every vote counts style of voting. If the Republican candidate is voted for and the Republican voting ticket is chosen to vote, they could vote all Republican or they could vote Democrat. If all but one of the Electors in those states votes Republican and the last one votes Democrat, the Republican candidate gets all of the electoral points that it recieved from the electors voting Republican and the Democrat candidate gets the point from the voter who chose Democrat. The states split their votes, but it has never happened in an election where the elecctoral votes in the state has had to be split.
I hate to break it to you, but in your last paragraph, you state that the Electoral College should vote in correspondence with its voters. On the contrary, it essentially already works like that. This whole system is based on the theory that a trusted official speaks for its people, and in this case the official speaks with its vote. In reality, this doesn't always work as we all know due to human nature. However, if you haven't learned in your class yet, the Bush-Gore election was one of the two or three elections in all of American history that the popular and electoral votes didn't agree. Also, I'm very sure that the US constitution talks about an Electoral College. The process has changed throughout history, but it's always been there. I know this because I'm an Officer of Elections for my state. It's my job to know this. That's all for now, have a good day, peace!!!