Although many people who read this article won’t be able to vote until next election cycle, it is still important to remind everyone of exactly what happens to your vote when you enter the booth. Most people assume that their vote is counted directly into the election of the new president, but in reality it is totally disregarded. To understand why this is, we have to go back to Constitutional times. Many of the Framers were strong Federalists, and overall they wanted the government to be a very small group of wealthy people making decisions without the idiotic general public making rash decisions. They wrote in two systems of election, popular and electoral. The popular vote, which is the vote from normal citizens, was written in to please the crowd. In reality the president is elected through the electoral vote. The electoral vote is put in through electoral colleges. They are basically collections of upper class citizens. The common misconception is that they are forced to vote based on state majorities, but they are not. Out of 56 elections, 4 of the winners lost the popular vote. What does that mean? It means that out of a population of 320 million people, only 538 delegates decide who the president is (2012 numbers). So instead of 100% deciding who can make executive orders for the next 4 years, only a ten thousandth of a percent do. Think about that when you enter the booth.