ELI5: How does the electoral college work?

Imagine our society is like a big class, and we need to pick a class president.

• Voting: Everyone in the class gets to vote for who they want as president. That's the popular vote.

• Groups: Instead of everyone's vote being counted directly, imagine the class is divided into smaller groups, like tables. Each table represents a state.

• Electors: Each table gets a certain number of representatives called electors. Bigger tables (states with more people) get more electors. The number of electors a state gets is based on how many people live there.

• Table Vote: When people at a table vote, they aren't directly voting for the class president. They're voting for which team of electors that table will send to the "Electoral College". Usually, whichever candidate wins the most votes at a table gets all of that table's electors. It's a "winner-take-all" system, in most states.

• Electoral College: All the electors from all the tables come together. This is the Electoral College.

• Final Vote: The electors cast their votes. Whoever gets more than half of all the electoral votes wins and becomes class president, even if they didn't get the most votes from everyone in the class (the popular vote).