The United States Electoral College is the mechanism established by the United States Constitution for the election/ appointment of the President and Vice President of the United States by electors from each state and the District of Columbia. The Constitution specifies that each state legislature individually determines its own process for appointing electors. In current practice, all state legislatures use the statewide popular vote to choose a slate of electors who are pledged to vote for a particular party's candidate. Thus, today the President and Vice President are effectively chosen through indirect election by the citizens. The most recent vote by the Electoral College saw the appointment of Mellie Grant as the nation's first elected Female President.
The Twelfth Amendment requires each elector to cast one vote for president and another vote for vice president. In each state and the District of Columbia, electors are chosen every four years on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and then meet to cast ballots on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. The candidates who receive a majority of electoral votes among the states are elected president and vice president of the United States when the Electoral College vote is certified by Congress in early January. Pursuant to the Twentieth Amendment, the terms for president and vice president end at noon on January 20 following an election for those offices; the new terms for those offices then begin.