Answer:
A) The system allows candidates who lost the popular vote to win the presidency.
Explanation:
When you vote for a presidential candidate, you are in fact voting to instruct the electors from your state to cast their votes for the same candidate. For example, if you vote for the Republican candidate in the November election, you are really just picking an elector who will be pledged to vote for the Republican candidate when the Electoral College votes in December. The candidate who wins the popular vote in a state wins all the pledged votes of the state's electors, in the 48 winner-take-all states and District of Columbia. Nebraska and Maine award electors proportionally. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its number of members in the U.S. House of Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. senators. The District of Columbia gets three electors. State laws determine how electors are chosen, but they are generally selected by the political party committees within the states. Each elector gets one vote. Thus, a state with eight electors would cast eight votes. As of the 1964 election, there are 538 electors, and the votes of a majority of them—270 votes—are required to be elected. Because Electoral College representation is based on congressional representation, states with larger populations get more Electoral College votes. Should none of the candidates win 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment mandates the election be decided by the House of Representatives. The combined representatives of each state get one vote and a simple majority of states is required to win. This has only happened twice: Presidents Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and John Quincy Adams in 1825 were elected by the House of Representatives
