On Tuesday, Nov. 8, the polls will close, ballot counting will begin, and with any luck, we will know who our president is by the end of the night.

But that’s actually not the official end of the election. There is still one more vote, and though it is largely a formality these days, it is crucial to America’s electoral process.

That’s the vote by the Electoral College.

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What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is, essentially, the vote that determines who will be president and vice president.

The college was set down in Article II of the Constitution:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Who are the electors?

There are 538 electors, equal to the number of congressmen in the House of Representatives, plus the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, plus three for electors for the District of Columbia.

The amount of electors each state gets is equal to the size of each state’s Congressional delegation. For instance, Florida has 27 representatives and two senators, for a total of 29 electoral votes.

To win, a presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes. It can be any combination of states, but they have to reach the 270-vote threshold.

With a few exceptions, the winner of the popular vote in each state wins all the electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska each have a kind of proportional representation in the college, so it’s possible for candidates to split the vote.

Before Election Day, each political party chooses a slate of electors. Once a candidate wins the election, the state finalizes who the electors are. Essentially, when people cast their votes for president, they are really choosing electors.

Then, those electors meet on and vote for president and vice president on separate ballots. This year, that election will take place Dec. 19.

The U.S. National Archives maintains the Electoral College.

On the Archives website, they have an interactive Electoral College map so you can see what it would take for your chosen candidate to reach 270 Electoral College votes.

By the way, if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes, the U.S. House of Representatives chooses the president.

Are the electors bound to the popular vote?

There’s no provision in the Constitution or in federal law requiring electors to vote according to the popular vote.

However, some states require the elector to be bound to the popular vote. Political parties can also force electors to sign pledges requiring them to vote for the candidate.

This is what the law says in Florida:

The Governor shall nominate only the electors recommended by the state executive committee of the respective political party. Each such elector shall be a qualified elector of the party he or she represents who has taken an oath that he or she will vote for the candidates of the party that he or she is nominated to represent.

Other states have so called “Faithless Elector” clauses that say the elector can face fines or be disqualified and replaced.

According to the National Archives, which handles the Electoral College, more than 99 percent of electors in the history of the country have voted as pledged.

Why did the founders add the Electoral College?

When the Constitution was created, the American states were a loose confederation.

“At the time, each of the states were an independent political unit,” said Aubrey Jewett, political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “There was on one hand some pressure to work together so they could be stronger as a country against the big bad European power, but on the other hand, they didn’t really want to work together.”

Even during the Constitutional Convention, there was a reluctance among the states to give up any sovereignty. And small states and large states fought over how much power each had over government.

Several compromises helped bring the states together into one country, such as the Great Compromise, which led to our two-chamber U.S. Congress.

The Electoral College helped assuage that large state/small state conflict. No state had less than three electoral votes, and even if a large state had more electoral votes, it wasn’t so much more that they overpowered the interests of small states.

The other reason was, quite simply, the founders didn’t trust us.

“There was basically the fear of mob rule,” Jewett said. “That the masses would want to do things in the heat of passion that the elite and educated would not do.”

This is what Alexander Hamilton, one of the architects, said in The Federalist Papers, a collection of articles supporting the Constitution:

Some might say that has happened since, even in the current election.

This is also why our country is really a republic, not a democracy.

That’s why originally U.S. senators were also not chosen by the people but by state legislatures. That ended with the 17the Amendment.

The U.S. House has always been elected by the people, and the people can dispose of congressmen every two years with their vote.

Do we still need the Electoral College?

This debate has existed almost as long as the Constitution has. A majority of Americans have consistently said the Electoral College should go away.

The debate especially rears its head during close elections and ones in which a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College – a rare occurrence.

“The biggest criticism is that it’s not democratic as most people understand it,” Jewett said. “The thought that we can have a system where a candidate gets the most votes but loses the presidency is not very fair. That’s what happened in 2000.”

Jewett said the biggest reason to keep the Electoral College is still the small state/large state argument.

“Most of the small states say they already don’t get much attention. But that would be worse if we did away with the Electoral College,” Jewett said.

Right now, states that are closely divided get more attention. The state you live in matters. Hillary Clinton spends less time in California and New York doing public rallies because the states are reliably blue.

Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Iowa and Nevada get more attention from campaigns because they are hotly contested states. The population size doesn’t matter because every electoral vote counts.

Consider that Utah, traditionally a very "red" state, is now a tossup because of the presidential candidacy of independent Evan McMullin. If McMullin should win Utah, he will take six electoral votes. Analysts say the loss of just those six votes could hurt Donald Trump in the final electoral vote count.

Now imagine there is no Electoral College. That means the state you live in no longer matters.

Where do the candidates go? They go to places with the largest population centers: California, New York, Texas, Virginia and Florida. Now, the candidates can win the election by visiting fewer states and population centers.

The rural areas lose importance.

“If we get rid of the Electoral College, there’s no such thing as a battleground state, because it doesn’t matter if you’re close or not in a popular vote,” Jewett said. “If we don’t have that, they’re going to spend all their time in the 10 or 15 largest states, because that’s where all the voters are.”

And for Republican voters – many of the largest states are not red but blue.

How would we get rid of the Electoral College?

As with anything in the Constitution, the only way to get rid of the Electoral College is through a Constitutional amendment.

"To get a constitutional amendment passed, first you have to get two-thirds of the House and Senate to propose it," Jewett said. "Then you need three-fourths of the states to ratify it."

The question is, would small-population states give up their say in choosing the president?

Have more questions? the National Archives has its own Electoral College Frequently Asked Questions section on its website.