question: During presidential election, why are electoral votes counted instead of everyone's individual vote?
comment: It's to try to even out the country. Most of the time, societies will vote similar to their surroundings (which is why you have basically guaranteed red/blue states) so if you went based entirely on population there would only be a handful of societies that would be choosing the president (think NYC or LA). The electoral college was designed to give the smaller, rural states a chance to have their vote matter.
passages: The U.S. President is elected only indirectly by voters, through the Electoral College. Under Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, of the U.S. Constitution, the number of electors for every state is the sum of the number of that state's senators and representatives. This was also a result of the original Connecticut Compromise between large and small states. The effect is to give each state a two-elector bonus (for the state's two Senators) regardless of population. A low-population state does not receive one elector in a body of 435, but three electors out of 535. The two-elector bonus is comparatively minor for a state with a high population.
   In the event that the Electoral College does not produce a majority for any candidate, the 12th Amendment (roughly as Article II, Section 1 had done) throws the election to the U.S. House (the U.S. Senate choosing the Vice President), but under a procedure where each state's delegation, regardless of size, casts one vote—thus giving smaller states more voting power in the event of a deadlock than larger states. For example, Wyoming, with only one representative, has the same power as California, with 53 representatives.
  
  Section::::Apportionment by country.:United States.:State senates.
   There is some debate over whether the Electoral College favors small- or large-population states. Those who argue that the College favors low-population states point out that such states have proportionally more electoral votes relative to their populations. This is because each state's electoral votes are equal to the sum of its seats in both houses of Congress: the proportional allocation of House seats has been distorted by the fixed size of the House since 1929 and the requirement that each state have at least one representative, and Senate seats are not proportional to population at all.
   Washington, D.C. did not have a voice in the selection of the President until 1961, when the 23rd Amendment was ratified, giving D.C. the treatment of a state in the Electoral College ("but in no event more than the least populous State"; that is, three electors, increasing the total number of electors to 538).
   A separate obstacle to proportional representation is that almost all of the states choose electors on a "winner-take-all" basis, where the state's electors are awarded to the candidate with the most popular votes in that state. Maine and Nebraska are the only states that instead use the "congressional district method", selecting one elector within each congressional district by popular vote and awarding two electors by a statewide popular vote. With the "winner-takes-all" method used by most of the states, a candidate can still win the presidency without winning the national popular vote (such as what happened in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016).
   Faithless electors have never changed the outcome of any presidential election. Only once, in 1836, has an election's outcome been influenced by faithless electors. In that instance, Virginia's 23 electors were pledged to vote for Richard Mentor Johnson to be vice-president, but instead voted for former South Carolina senator William Smith, leaving Johnson one vote short of the majority needed to be elected. In accordance with the Twelfth Amendment, the Senate then chose between the top two receivers of electoral votes for vice-president, electing Johnson on the first ballot. Over the course of 58 presidential elections since 1789, only 0.67% of all electors have been unfaithful.
   The Twelfth Amendment stipulates that each elector must cast distinct votes for President and Vice President, instead of two votes for President. Additionally, electors may not vote for presidential and vice-presidential candidates who both reside in the elector's state—at least one of them must be an inhabitant of another state.
   Countervailing analyses which do take into consideration the sizes of the electoral voting blocs, such as the Banzhaf power index (BPI) model based on probability theory lead to very different conclusions about voters relative power. In 1968, John F. Banzhaf III (who developed the Banzhaf power index) determined that a voter in the state of New York had, on average, 3.312 times as much voting power in presidential elections as a voter in any other U.S. state. It was found that based on 1990 census and districting, individual voters in California, the largest state, had 3.3 times more individual power to choose a president than voters of Montana, the largest of the states allocating the minimum of three electors. Because Banzhaf's method ignores the demographic makeup of the states, it has been criticized for treating votes like independent coin-flips. More empirically based models of voting yield results that seem to favor larger states less.
   After the initial estimates agreed to in the original Constitution, Congressional and Electoral College reapportionment was made according to a decennial census to reflect population changes, modified by counting three-fifths of persons held as slaves for apportionment of representation. Beginning with the first census, Electoral College votes repeatedly eclipsed the electoral basis supporting slave-power in the choice of the U.S. president. 
   By the 1830s, most states chose their electors by popular vote. While voting for individual electors was still the norm at this point, by this time the electors who appeared on ballots were nominated by the state chapters of national parties with the understanding that they would cast their votes for their party's candidate if elected. Also by this time, political parties had successfully lobbied most states to allow voters to cast one vote for every elector that state had apportioned to it. The main rationale of this system was to greatly simplify the distribution of presidential ballots. Prior to the introduction of the secret ballot, political parties were responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots, thus, allowing voters to cast as many votes as the state had electors meant a party could print a standardized ballot containing the same slate of the party's presidential electors for each state. Also, whether an intended consequence or not, this system resulted in most states having a "de facto" (but not "de jure") winner-take-all method of allocating presidential electors. 
   Since 1836, statewide winner-take-all popular voting for electors has been the almost universal practice. , Maine (from 1972) and Nebraska (from 1996) use the district plan, with two at-large electors assigned to support the winner of the statewide popular vote.
  
  Section::::History.:Fourteenth Amendment.
   Alexander Hamilton described the Founding Fathers' view of how electors would be chosen: They assumed this would take place district by district. That plan was carried out by many states until the 1880s. For example, in Massachusetts in 1820, the rule stated "the people shall vote by ballot, on which shall be designated who is voted for as an Elector for the district." In other words, the people did not place the name of a candidate for a president on the ballot, instead they voted for their local elector, whom they trusted later to cast a responsible vote for president.
   Fundamentally, the representation of a population in the thousands or millions by a reasonable size, thus accountable governing body involves arithmetic that will not be exact. Although it could make representation more exact for a representative's votes (on proposed laws and measures etc.) to be weighted according to the number of his constituents, it avoids complexity in governance, giving equality between representatives, if each elected representative has exactly 1 vote.
   Proponents of the compact, such as law professors Akhil and Vikram Amar (the compact's original framers), as well as U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin from Maryland's 8th congressional district (a former law professor), have argued that state legislatures have the plenary power to appoint electors in accordance with the national popular vote under the , which states that "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress". Vikram Amar, along with other legal scholars, have also cited the Supreme Court's rulings in "McPherson v. Blacker" (1892) and "Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission" (2015) as recognizing that states have wide discretion in selecting the method by which they appoint their electors.
   For many years early in the nation's history, up until the Jacksonian Era, many states appointed their electors by a vote of the state legislature, and proponents argue that, in the end, the election of the president must still come down to the decisions of each state, or the federal nature of the United States will give way to a single massive, centralized government.
   Under the U.S. Constitution the president and vice president are chosen by electors, under a constitutional grant of authority delegated to the legislatures of the several states. The Constitution reserves the choice of the precise manner for creating electors to the will of the state legislatures. It does not define or delimit what process a state legislature may use to create its "state" college of electors. In practice, the state legislatures have generally chosen to create electors through an indirect popular vote, since the 1820s. Most states have a "winner-take-all" system in which the candidate with the most votes in the state gets all the electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska allow individual congressional districts to elect one elector.
   The Constitution includes the result of the Great Compromise resulting in representation for the US Senate. Each state was equally represented in the Senate with two representatives, without regard to population. The Founding Fathers considered this principle of such importance that they included a clause in the Constitution to prohibit any state from being deprived of equal representation in the Senate without its permission; see Article V of the United States Constitution. For this reason, "one person, one vote" has never been implemented in the U.S. Senate, in terms of representation by states.
   BULLET::::- The current Electoral College system allows a candidate to win the Presidency while losing the popular vote, as happened in the elections of 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016. (The 1960 election is also a disputed example.) In the 2000 election, for instance, Al Gore won 543,895 more votes nationally than George W. Bush, but Bush secured 5 more electors than Gore, in part due to a narrow Bush victory in Florida; in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton won 2,868,691 more votes nationally than Donald Trump, but Trump secured 77 more electors than Clinton, in part due to narrow Trump victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (a cumulative 77,744 votes).
   There have long been concerns about problems with the Electoral College method of selecting the President and Vice President. Under this system the party that wins a plurality in a given state gets all that state's electoral votes. (In Maine and Nebraska, the plurality rule applies by congressional district.)
   Most state laws establish a winner-take-all system, wherein the ticket that wins a plurality of votes wins all of that state's allocated electoral votes, and thus has their slate of electors chosen to vote in the Electoral College. Maine and Nebraska do not use this method, instead giving two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one electoral vote to the winner of each Congressional district.
   The Constitution gives each state legislature the power to decide how its state's electors are chosen and it can be easier and cheaper for a state legislature to simply appoint a slate of electors than to create a legislative framework for holding elections to determine the electors. As noted above, the two situations in which legislative choice has been used since the Civil War have both been because there was not enough time or money to prepare for an election. However, appointment by state legislature can have negative consequences: bicameral legislatures can deadlock more easily than the electorate. This is precisely what happened to New York in 1789 when the legislature failed to appoint any electors.
   The Electoral College denies voters equal influence in the presidential election. However, it induces presidential candidates to campaign outside large population centers and insulates small states from being overwhelmed by election irregularities in large population centers. On the other hand, the electoral college encourages political campaigners to focus on so-called "swing states" while ignoring the rest of the country. States in which polling shows no clear favorite are usually inundated with campaign visits, television advertising, get-out-the-vote efforts by party organizers and debates, while "four out of five" voters in the national election are "absolutely ignored," according to one assessment.
   The "one person, one vote" doctrine, which requires electoral districts to be apportioned according to population, thus making each district roughly equal in population, was further cemented in the cases that followed "Baker", including which concerned the County Unit System in Georgia, which concerned state legislature districts, which concerned U.S. Congressional districts and which concerned local government districts, a decision which was upheld in . said states may use total population in drawing districts.
  
  Section::::United States.:Other uses.
   In American presidential elections, each state is free to decide the method by which its electors to the Electoral College will be chosen. To increase its voting power in the Electoral College system, every state, with the exceptions of Maine and Nebraska, has adopted a winner-take-all system, where the candidate who wins the most popular votes in a state wins all of that state's electoral votes. The expectation was that the candidates would look after the interests of the states with the most electoral votes. However, in practice, most voters tend not to change party allegiance from one election to the next, leading presidential candidates to concentrate their limited time and resources campaigning in those states that they believe they can swing towards them or stop states from swinging away from them, and not to spend time or resources in states they expect to win or lose. Because of the electoral system, the campaigns are less concerned with increasing a candidate's national popular vote, tending instead to concentrate on the popular vote only in those states which will provide the electoral votes it needs to win the election, and it is far from unheard of for a candidate to secure sufficient electoral votes while not having won the national popular vote, such as in the case of the 2016 presidential election. 
   Section::::Criticism.
  
  The electoral college encourages political campaigners to focus on these swing states while ignoring the rest of the country. States in which polling shows no clear favorite are usually inundated with campaign visits, television advertising, get-out-the-vote efforts by party organizers and debates, while "four out of five" voters in the national election are "absolutely ignored," according to one assessment.
  