In December of 1788 sixty nine electors representing 11 states voted unanimously to elect George Washington as our first President. Only the voters in Maryland and Virginia were allowed to participate in the Presidential Election.
George Washington was not elected by the 3,929,214 people living in the United States, he was chosen by 69 Presidential electors.
Only 43,782 people voted in the Presidential election of George Washington in 1788 and only 28,579 voted to re-elect him in 1792.
The reason that so few people voted is because their vote would not be counted for the purpose of electing the President. The President would be chosen by the electors in each of the states.
Many of the first 69 electors chosen to elect our first President were the same men who signed the Declaration of Independence and helped to write the Constitution. They did not trust the people at large with the power to elect the President. They created what is known as the electoral college in order to prevent the uneducated masses from having the power to elect the President.
After John Quincy Adams became President despite having having fewer popular votes and electoral votes than Andrew Jackson most of the states began conducting a statewide popular vote.
In a democracy all of the votes cast in all of the states would be combined to determine the winning candidate, but in our republic all of the votes in each of the states are counted separately. In other words we do not have just one election for President, we have 50 separate elections.
Currently there are 538 electors and there should be over 11,000. The ratio of one representative for every 30,000 allows the people and the states to be equally represented, but exceeding the limit of 30,000 concentrates the power of many into the hands of a few.
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This is a succinct and understandable way of explaining the "Electoral College" to others. It will make sense to them that each STATE elects the president, and then they ceremoniously present their votes on election night to the people.
Isn't this what you are saying?
Norma, yes, except that nothing is decided on November 3 or even the fourth. State have until December 14th to finalize their votes.