by Ray Peters

Created on: November 15, 2009

The Electoral College was created by the framers of the US Constitution to provide for the election to the office of President of the United States. Since then, every President has been elected by the College rather than by direct popular vote.

As one might expect, this has resulted in some elections where the candidate who won the popular vote has not become President. To date, this has occurred four times:

The first instance was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams won the presidency over Andrew Jackson after the contentious election failed to produce a clear winner and the issue was decided in the House of Representatives.

The second instance occurred in 1876 - arguably one of the most disputed elections in US history - where Rutherford B. Hayes won over Samuel J. Tilden.

The third occurrence was the election of 1888 where Benjamin Harrison narrowly defeated Grover Cleveland despite the latter winning the majority of the popular vote.

The last instance as of 2009 was the election of 2000. Here once again, the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the election. George W. Bush was elected after the controversy over awarding Florida's electoral votes was resolved in favor of Bush. In this case Al Gore had won the popular vote by a margin of over a half million votes.

How does this happen? Simply put, the focus on a few so-called "battleground" or swing states can win the election for a candidate. As Article II of the Constitution spells out, the number of electoral votes each state is entitled to corresponds to the number of senators and representatives for that state.

Currently there are 538 electors in the Electoral College of which 270 are required in order to win. These electors are representatives appointed to cast votes for the candidate winning the state. How the electors are chosen is left up to the individual states and several systems are used.

This system is an all or nothing proposition and the actual popular vote is not a factor in the election as voters are in reality casting votes for appointing electors to the College, who in turn cast their votes for the candidate their party supports.

There is no provision for insuring that an elector will in fact vote for the candidate they're suppose to vote for, although 24 states have laws in place to punish so-called "faithless" electors. And although no election to date has been affected by faithless electors, the potential is there.

In addition, as mentioned above, the presidential campaigns -

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