Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have spent months traveling the country during the 2024 presidential election campaign, competing for the American vote to move into the White House.

With each new presidential election cycle, American citizens ask themselves the same question, keeping in mind the power of the Electoral College: “Does my vote count?”

U.S. elected local and state officials can do this by winning the popular vote. However, the President of the United States is elected with the help of the Electoral College and the popular vote.

To win the White House, a candidate must receive at least 270 electoral votes. (Soeren Stache/photo alliance via Getty Images)

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Typically, the popular vote and the electoral vote mirror each other, but there are few examples in history where the two have differed. Most recently, in 2016, Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is the formal process by which the President and Vice President of the United States are elected to office.

“The Electoral College, as we know it, was established by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1804. Today there are a total of 538 electoral votes, and a candidate needs at least 270 to win,” according to Fox News. Todd Piro explained on “Fox and Friends” in November 2020.

In the Electoral College, Washington DC has its own three electors.

In 48 states plus Washington DC, the winner of the popular vote gets all the electoral votes for that state, according to USA.gov. This does not apply to Maine and Nebraska, where a proportional system is used per source.

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president after winning the electoral vote but losing the popular vote to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

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How does the Electoral College work?

While the popular vote takes place in November, the electoral vote does not take place until about a month later, in mid-December.

Who is chosen as a state’s electors, how they are chosen, and when they are chosen varies by state, but according to the National Archives website, there is a two-part system.

The electoral lists are chosen at state party congresses, or voted on by the party’s central committee based on state or national party rules.

During general elections, voters in all states cast their ballots to select their electors who will represent their choice in the presidential election. Voters’ names may or may not appear on the ballots.

Voters promise to vote for specific candidates, even though they are not legally obliged to do so. While there is no federal law that allows voters to vote a certain way, there are penalties, such as exclusion from future ballots.

Over the years, there have been many calls to change the Electoral College as we know it.

Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee after Joe Biden dropped out of the race. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

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“Over the years, there have been hundreds of proposed amendments to change the Electoral College, but only one of them came even close after Richard Nixon won over Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace in the 1968 presidential election,” Piro said. “A 1969 bill to replace the Electoral College with the popular vote was passed in the House of Representatives, and although it was passed by Nixon, the bill ultimately died in the Senate after it was passed, and it still stands today.”

Recently, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called for the complete abolition of the Electoral College.

“I think we all know the Electoral College has to go,” he said at a fundraising event in California in October, according to a pool report on the ground, Bloomberg reported. “We need a national popular vote, but that’s not the world we live in.”

To abolish the system created by the Founding Fathers would require major constitutional change.