electoral college, Constitutionally mandated process for electing the U.S. president and vice president. Each state appoints as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress (U.S. senators, representatives, and government officers are ineligible); the District of Columbia has three votes. A winner-take-all rule operates in every state except Maine and Nebraska. Four presidents have been elected by means of an electoral college victory while losing the national popular vote: Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, George W. Bush in 2000, and Donald Trump in 2016. (In 1824 Andrew Jackson received a plurality of electoral and popular votes; by constitutional design, election of the president went to the House of Representatives, and John Quincy Adams won.) Though pledged to vote for their state’s winners, electors are not constitutionally obliged to do so. A candidate must win 270 of the 538 votes to win the election.
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