Today is the day we choose our new President!  And remember that we have this Electoral College thing, whatever that is, and watch the news roll with numbers and stats but don’t know quite what to make of it.

Maybe that’s just me.

But! We homeschool!  That means I can figure it out AND we can call it Civics at the same time!

The Electoral College is kind of like our Congress- each state gets Electoral members based on its population.  The Electoral College tallies up who won the popular vote in the state and that’s who they cast their ballot for.  It’s meant to keep the highly populous states from steamrolling the election by virtue of their greater numbers- without the electoral college, who would care which way Ohio was swinging?

Anyway, in order to become President, a candidate must get 270 votes.  (The number in the Electoral College is 538.)

Here’s a printable electoral college map that you can use tonight as the results roll in to see how things are going.  Remember, Republicans are RED and Democrats are BLUE.

Here’s an online electoral college map- click once on the state to make it Republican, click twice to make it blue for the Democrats.

Here’s something interesting- the Electoral College casts their vote in December, officially. So while we vote in November, and the race is called on TV, it’s not official until Dec. 17.

And if there’s a tie, the Congress gets to pick the President and the Senate picks the VP. Can you even imagine a Romney/Biden cabinet?

We’ll be watching election coverage today.  Do you watch or are you so tired of the whole thing you can’t even stand to turn on the TV?