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Every four years, millions of Americans cast ballots to choose the next US President. Unfortunately, a large percentage of these citizens have their vote arbitrarily discarded by the vagaries of the true way in which the US President is actually elected. The reason why these votes are thrown out is because these citizens happen to live in a state where their political party lost, and because of how votes are counted, they could have just stayed home that day.

The reason why many voter ballots are worthless, whereas other votes are priceless can only be found if you can understand the complexities of the Presidential selection as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The process defined by the Constitution requires each state to choose representatives by any means, and these representatives then gather to vote for who the next President will actually be. This process is called the Electoral College. When Americans cast their presidential ballot during the general election, most do not realize that they are not actually voting for who will be President. Rather, they are casting a vote to decide which political party will select their state's representatives to the US Electoral College. These representatives, in turn, will actually vote to decide the next President of the United States.

The electoral college was originally defined by our founding fathers in the US Constitution, Article II, Section 1. As conceived, each state receives the same number of Electoral College representatives as their combined total of US Representatives and Senators. For example, the state of California has two Senators and fifty-two Representatives, thus, California has fifty-four total electoral voters. Each state has two Senators and at least one Representative; thus, each state receives a minimum of three electoral members.

The Electoral College members for each state are selected in a process defined by that state's legislature. At this time, nearly every state awards the selection of their electoral members to the party of the candidate that receives the highest number of votes in the general election. Thus, in California, the privilege to select all fifty-four electoral representatives is granted to the party whose candidate receives the highest number of votes, even if that candidate did not receive a majority of all votes cast.

One little known fact about the Presidential election process is the fact that the President is not actually chosen on Election Day. Even though we avidly

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