Voters select presidential electors, who in turn, will vote for the new president and vice president on November 8 through the Electoral College. Electors are apportioned to each of the 50 states as well as to the District of Columbia (also known as Washington, DC).
The number of electors in each state is equal to the number of members of Congress to which the state is entitled, while the 23rd Amendment grants the District of Columbia the same number of electors as the least populous state, currently three.
Therefore, in total, there are currently 538 electors, corresponding to the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 senators, plus the three additional electors from the District of Columbia.
It may be noted that electoral members are not members of US Congress.
In contrast, India, which has a multi-party political system, is a constitutional democracy with a parliamentary and not the presidential system of government.
India has been divided into 543 parliamentary constituencies, each of which elects one MP to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament. The political party holding a majority in the Lok Sabha elects its leader as the Prime Minister of the country.
Over 814 million people were eligible to vote in Indian elections, considered the world's biggest democratic exercise where voting was held in 10 stages. India's general elections see a large number of political parties contest the polls. In the 2009 election for instance, 363 political parties took part in the polls.
