The U.S. Electoral College is a specific form of an electoral college and is the method by which the President and Vice President of the United States are chosen. The Electoral College was established by Article Two, Section One of the U.S. Constitution, and meets every four years with electors from each state. The 23rd Amendment to the Constitution has allowed electors from the District of Columbia to cast votes for the election of the president. The electoral process was modified in 1804 with the ratification of Amendment XII. Presidential elections take place on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in years evenly divisible by four. Although ballots typically list the names of the Presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and the District of Columbia actually choose electors when they vote for President. These electors in turn cast the official votes for President. Federal law says that each state's electors meet in their state capitals on the Monday following the second Wednesday of December. There, they cast their electoral votes for President and Vice President.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Electoral_College

Today's selected anniversaries:

451 - Attila, king of the Huns, invaded Gaul, but was defeated by Aetius with the help of Roman Foederati in the Battle of Chalons. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chalons)

1378 - Papal Schism: Unhappy with the behavior of Pope Urban VI, a group of cardinals elected a rival papacy in Antipope Clement VII, throwing the Church into a turmoil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism)

1854 - The Crimean War began with a Franco-British victory over Russian forces at the Battle of Alma. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Alma)

1946 - The first Cannes Film Festival began. Eleven films shared the Palme d'Or that year. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival)

1973 - Billie Jean King thrashed Bobby Riggs in straight sets before 30,492 spectators at the Astrodome in Houston, Texas in an internationally televised tennis match dubbed as the "Battle of the Sexes".

Wikiquote of the day: "A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love... Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love." ~ Leonard Cohen (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leonard_Cohen)