During every U.S Presidential Election cycle, people keep on asking one question. “What is Electoral College, and why do we have it?”. They also ask, “why is the candidate with the most electoral college declared winner, and not the one with the popular vote?”

Here is why…

The concept of electoral college in the U.S election process dates back to the 18th century. In 1787, delegates gathered during the Constitutional Convention to discuss whether the Congress (a bicameral legislature divided into two equal institutions: the House of Representatives and the Senate) should choose the President, or he or she should be voted directly by citizens.

According to Michael Thorning, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s democracy project, the delegates decided to delegate the issue to a group tasked with resolving prior disagreements over certain areas of the Constitution. It was called the Committee on Unfinished Parts.

The long and short of it is that the committee settled on the Electoral College as a compromise, with the issue of population size coming to play. While delegates from large states like New York and Pennsylvania would have favoured an election system where the popular vote carries the day, smaller states had concerns that they would be disenfranchised by populous states.

“There were some attendees of the Constitutional Convention who did not trust the popular will as much,” Thorning told American outlet CBS. “They were concerned that you would be asking people with very little political experience, knowledge of the candidates, understanding of their platforms, to select someone that they may not know. And so they may just vote only for the person whose name they recognize, versus the most competent candidate. So, this was a bargain.”

What is the Electoral College?

According to the U.S National Archives and Records Administration, the Electoral College process entails Americans electing their President and Vice President indirectly through their state’s electors.

Before the general election, all the 50 states select their electors, with each state allocated electors roughly based on its population. The number of electors are equal to the state’s total number of U.S senators and House members in Congress. This means that even the least-populated states get three electors (one for each Member in the House of Representatives plus two Senators), while many states have more.

There are 538 votes in the Electoral College and it takes 270 — a majority — to win the presidency.

It’s possible to win the popular vote nationwide but still lose the election, if states with enough electoral votes go the other way.  In 2016, Donald Trump won the Electoral College with 304 votes compared to 227 votes for Hillary Clinton, but the Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes.

“While voters go to the polls and see a presidential candidate on the ballot, they are actually voting for electors who represent those people,” he said. “Whoever the prevailing electors are in those elections, they are the people who ultimately cast the Electoral College votes. So, the post-election period, really, is a process of translating these many popular vote elections into the Electoral College.”

Constitutional law expert Alison LaCroix tells NPR that the backers of the Electoral College idea say the system balances power among large and small states, brings stability, and is an obstacle to demagogues.