Why the Electoral College exists — and how Tennessee votes are actually counted
by Brandon Burley and The Redemption Project
Every election cycle, millions of Americans hear phrases like “popular vote,” “Electoral College,” “swing states” and “the election was called.”
At the same time, many voters are never fully taught how presidential elections actually work in the United States.
That confusion matters.
Not because people are unintelligent, but because the American election system is layered. A presidential election is not run the same way as a Tennessee governor’s race. A governor’s race is not run the same way as a U.S. Senate race. And a national popular vote is not the mechanism currently used to elect presidents.
In conversations online, I increasingly see people using terms interchangeably that actually mean very different things:
popular vote,
Electoral College,
electoral votes,
certified vote counts,
and national election results.
So before the next major election cycle fully ramps up, I wanted to slow down and explain how the system actually works.
Not politically.
Structurally.
Because regardless of someone’s party affiliation, voters should understand how their vote moves through the system
The most important starting point
The United States does not directly elect presidents through a national popular vote.
That sentence alone surprises some people.
When Americans vote for president, they are technically voting for a slate of electors connected to a presidential candidate.
Those electors are part of the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is the constitutional system used to formally elect the president of the United States (U.S. Constitution, art. II).
That does not mean the popular vote is meaningless.
It means the popular vote functions differently depending on the office being elected.
What is the popular vote?
The popular vote is simply the total number of votes cast directly by voters.
If Candidate A receives 70 million votes nationally and Candidate B receives 68 million votes nationally, Candidate A won the national popular vote.
That is a mathematical count of individual ballots.
But under the current constitutional system, winning the national popular vote alone does not automatically make someone president.
Instead, presidential elections are decided through the Electoral College.
What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College is the constitutional process used to elect presidents.
Each state receives a certain number of electoral votes based on:
the state’s representation in the U.S. House of Representatives,
plus its two U.S. senators.
Tennessee currently has:
9 members in the U.S. House,
plus 2 senators,
for a total of 11 electoral votes.
There are currently 538 total electoral votes nationwide.
A presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency (National Archives, n.d.).
