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The president is elected by the electoral college. When the Constitution was first written, the authors felt that the common man was not educated well enough to elect the proper person as president. The electoral college system was set up to elect the president. Every state has a number of electors equal to the combined number of representatives and senators it has in Congress. When citizens go to the polls and vote, they elect the candidate for which they want their electors to vote. For example, if your state has twelve representatives and two senators, your state would have a total of fourteen electors. If in the election, candidate X defeats candidate Y, even if it is by just one vote, candidate X will receive all fourteen electoral votes from your state. It is therefore possible for a president to be elected without having the most popular votes, although that is a rare possibility.

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14y ago
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13y ago

Such is possible because of the indirect way in which the president is elected. In most states all of a states electoral votes go to the same candidate . Therefore a candidate can win by a narrow majority in a few large states and lose by a big majority in small states and win the electoral votes with a minority of popular votes.

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Q: How it is possible that a president can be elected to office without getting the majority of the votes?
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