Answer:
The United States Electoral College is the assembly that elects the President and Vice President every four years. US citizens do not directly elect a president and vice president, instead they elect an electorate who promises in advance to vote for a candidate from a specific party.
Each state is allowed to elect as many voters as the total number of senators and representatives to which the state is entitled. The District of Columbia gets the maximum number of voters it would have if it were a state, but no more voters than the least populous state (as of today, three). Therefore, there are currently 538 voters, corresponding to 435 Representatives in the House of Representatives and 100 Senators in the Senate, as well as the three constituencies of the District of Columbia. The Constitution prohibits any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.
The candidate receiving a qualified majority of electoral votes (currently 270) is elected to the office. In five cases, most recently as a result of the 2016 presidential election, the electoral college system has resulted in the election of voters with a majority of the oaths of a candidate who did not win a simple majority of all votes in the election.
