there are popular and electoral votes, electoral votes are when government and representatives of each state vote for presidents, and a popular vote, which doesnt matter in most states, is just a popularity thing, like who is more voted for by the citizens.
here is a paragraph about it
The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted;--The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice.... The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President to the United States.
Presidential votes are tallied or counted once an elector has cast their vote. Depending on the electronics available in each region, often at the polling stations its done in a manual way and reviewed again at a high level. The information is then inputted into a central computer.
They are chosen as soon as the votes of the Presidential election are counted and certified .
The first presidential election where computers performed some of the vote counting was the 1964 (Johnson vs. Goldwater) election, where 7 counties used punchcard ballots. There still has not been a presidential election (as of 2014) where all votes were counted by computers.
All votes in a papal election are counted by hand. There are no voting machines used.
538 votes
counting the electoral votes that were cast in the presidential election
Wisconsin had 10 electoral votes in the 2008 Presidential election. They will also have 10 electoral votes in the 2012, 2016, and 2020 Presidential elections
A disadvantage of the presidential election could be that the person with the most popular votes could lose the election because he or she had less electoral votes.
Pennsylvania cast 6,013,272 votes in the 2008 presidential election, translating into 21 electoral votes which were cast for Barack Obama (D).
Pennsylvania had 21 electoral votes in the 2008 presidential election. These went to Barack Obama (D).
The presidential candidate who received the least votes in the South in the election of 1860 was John Bell.
9 votes
Elective votes.