A closer look at the process of electing the US president

The race for President of the United States, currently between Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, is a ritual that takes place every four years.

On the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, every four years, American citizens, 18 years and older, go to their local voting stations to elect, among others, the next president and vice-president of the United States.

Even in this democratic republic, the popular vote may not determine who wins the election.

In the other races, from the State House to Congress; and in all local elections, the winners of the popular vote are elected. In the case of the president and vice-president, it is the electoral college that determines who wins.

It must be fresh in our memories what happened in the 2000 election. Then, Al Gore won the popular vote, but George W. Bush won the electoral votes and became President.

The founders, who wrote the American Constitution in 1787, in Philadelphia, chose this method of electing the president and his running mate.

They thought that it was a good compromise between those who wanted a direct vote of the people and those who wanted the top of the ticket to be elected by Congress.

The electoral votes are apportioned among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, better known as Washington DC.

Each state was allotted a number of electors equal to the number of Representatives and Senators that represent the state in Congress.

The founders allowed every state to to be represented by 2 Senators regardless of the size of its population, in order to balance the power of the less populated states with that of the densely populated ones.

This was another compromise that the Founders reached to bring consensus to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and to insure a yes vote, in the smaller states on the ratification of the Constitution.

California, the most populous state in the union has 55 electoral votes, followed by Texas with 34 votes and New York state with 31 votes.

There are six states with three votes each, which is the minimum number of electors a sparsely populated state should have along with the District of Columbia.

The number of electors per state could fluctuate every ten years, when by law, a national census is conducted to determine the size of the population in every state in the United States.

In every state, the winner, even by one vote, is given all the electoral votes except in the states of Nebraska and Maine.

Maine apportions the electors in proportion to the percentage that every candidate for President gets, and Nebraska apportions the votes according to Congressional districts, with the overall winner getting two extra votes, representing the number of senators for that state.

The number of electors who will vote in the 2008 election was determined by the 2000 census.

There are 538 electors representing the 435 members of the lower house of Congress and 100 Senators.

To win the election, either the McCain-Palin ticket or the Obama-Biden ticket needs to receive 270 of these votes, representing fifty per cent plus one votes.

What is most interesting about this "indirect" method is the fact that a candidate could lose the popular vote by a landslide and still win the Presidency.

A candidate could win the presidency even if he won in only 10 of the most populous states, even with a small margin, plus any of the least populated states or the District of Columbia.

This means that a candidate could lose with a big margin in 40 of the 50 states and still be elected president. That is why the American Bar Association and numerous groups have been very critical of the Electoral College, calling it archaic and undemocratic.

There have been over 700 attempts to reform the Electoral College and many attempts to amend the constitution, but all have failed. It may take a constitutional crisis of great proportion to allow the reformers to prevail.

In the meantime, we all hope that America will not witness another crisis as the one we faced in the 2000. Only time will tell.

Sam Zakhem is a former US Ambassador to Bahrain.