Republican Party’s national convention last week in Cleveland, Ohio and the Democratic national convention in Philadelphia this week marked the end of the primaries officially for the two major parties and now the election is moving to the final process, which would end on November 8th, 2016 and there is still lot of complexity to the process left.

When the Americans vote in the Presidential Election on November 8th, they won’t be casting their votes directly for the President. Instead, they will actually be voting for a group of people known as electors. They are part of the Electoral College, the process used to elect the U.S. President and Vice President. The Electoral College serves as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The process begins when political parties select the people who will serve as electors. The electors then meet to vote for the President and the Vice President, and then Congress counts the electoral votes.

There is a total of 538 electors. So a candidate needs to win 270 electors to get selected as the President. In 48 states, the person who secures the majority of all the votes secures all of the electoral votes. Only two states, Maine and Nebraska follows the congressional district method, where electoral votes are awarded on a district basis.