The US presidential election is conducted by an electoral college with electoral votes. How are these indicated?

Answer

It’s a bit of a strange system, such a staged and indirect election of president (and vice president). The logic behind it was

• that the congress was not trusted enough to elect a president: the latter would become too dependent on the congress/parliament, and the former would perhaps be too divided to make a choice.
• that people did not trust the direct election of a president, partly because of the problems with counting, and possible imbalances between states that are more or less populated, or that had more or fewer (white) voters.

The result was a kind of shadow congress with only one task: to elect a president.

• The number of members is mirrored that of the real congress, but the members are not allowed to hold federal office, and therefore do not sit in the congress. They really must be other people.
• Strangely, the electoral votes never physically meet, except state by state
• They are elected state by state based on the name of the presidential candidate they support, not on their own name (only in 8 states do the names of the electors appear on the ballot papers). Sometimes they even remain completely anonymous.
• Unlike congressmen, electoral votes are elected on a state-by-state basis to make the choice clearer and reduce the hassle: either one side of electors gets elected, or another. Two states (Maine and Nebraska) do not, and look at the winners by constituency, thus often providing elected electoral votes of different party colors.
• They are therefore staunch party militants, who are elected by state division of each party in the preliminaries (primary elections) or caucus (at a party meeting), depending on the legislation of that state. Those nominations as electoral votes take place in the summer or autumn of the election year, in a manner organized by the parties. Once nominated by their party as elector, their backgrounds are checked by the congress (including whether they do not hold federal office, nationality, sometimes also a written promise for which candidate they will vote for once elected) and are confirmed as possible elector.

On the Monday following the second Wednesday in December after the election, the elected electors gather in their state’s capital to cast their ballots, which are then delivered to Congress. It is a very ceremonial formality, with few surprises. They are not paid for that. Only a few states provide an expense allowance, which is usually donated to charity: New York state, for example, provides a $15 allowance for that one day, and 13 cents per mile as travel allowance to the capital Albany.

In the past there have been as many as 167 ‘faithless electors’ (nick name) or ‘fairvote electors’ (self-chosen name) who, after being elected, voted for another (vice) presidential candidate, or abstained. Usually it concerns problems of conscience, a few times the motivation was a deceased candidate, and twice it was a political statement to denounce the electoral system. Some states criminalize dissent voting, but it has never been prosecuted. Also, deviating voting behavior of electors has never weighed on the final election result.

• in 1836, 23 Democratic electors withdrew their support for Vice Presidential candidate Richard M. Johnson because his wife was a mixed-race slave. Johnson was one electoral vote short, but was elected vice president by the Senate (which still has to vote for a president or vice president in the event of a division of the electoral votes).
• In 1872, the Liberal Republican presidential candidate Horace Greeley died three weeks after Election Day, at the end of November. At the beginning of December, only 3 of the 66 elected electors from his camp cast a vote for the deceased: the others cast a blank ballot or voted for three other Democratic politicians. The presidency eventually went to the other camp, Republican Ulysses Grant.
• In 1912, the same happened to Republican Vice Presidential candidate James S. Sherman who died in the week before Election Day, when 8 electoral votes from his camp elected another Republican, Nicholas Murray Butler, as Vice President. In the end, presidency and vice presidency went to the Democratic camp.
• in 1948, part of the Democratic Party tore off in full election battle as the States Right Democrats Party (“Dixiecrats”), with Strom Thurmond as the presidential candidate who opposed the civil rights movement. Uncut Democratic elector Preston Parks nevertheless cast a ballot for Thurmond, who ended up winning 39 electoral votes from 4 states, even though he only had 3% of the citizens’ vote overall. Democrat Harry Truman was nevertheless re-elected.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, almost every presidential election had individual electors who voted a different preference than expected or promised. But special are the votes of electors Margarette Leach (1988) and Barbara-Lett Simmons (2000), who cast an unexpected vote to denounce the electoral system itself: Leach turned vice president and president in protest against the Winner-Takes -All principle, Simmons abstained in protest for Washington DC’s under-representation in the electoral system.
• In 2016 it was quite special because several electors voted differently, but did not do so in groups: 8 Democratic and 2 Republican electors cast a different vote, mainly out of dissatisfaction with the presidential candidates of their two parties.