What is the Electoral College? How Pa will decide who becomes president

The 2024 race for the White House appears to be a toss-up as we get closer to Election Day.

Like the 2020 election, the race will likely be decided by a handful of swing states, including — and maybe decisively — Pennsylvania.

Yes, Joe Biden earned 7 million more votes than Donald Trump that year, but the winner is the candidate who earns 270 Electoral College votes, and Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes were the ones that put Biden at 273. (He ultimately collected 306 Electoral College votes.)

So, what is the Electoral College and will it come down to Pennsylvania again?

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is a group of people chosen by each state who formally elect the President and Vice President of the United States based on how their state’s popular vote went.

Pennsylvania is a winner-takes-all state, which means the candidate who wins the popular vote in the state gets all 19 Electoral College votes.

Pennsylvania lost one Electoral College vote after the 2020 election when its number of U.S. representatives was cut from 18 to 17. Each state gets an Electoral College vote for each member of Congress, including the two senators.

Each party with a candidate on the ballot in Pennsylvania appoints 19 people to be their electors. If that candidate wins, those people become the Electoral College and are sent to Harrisburg to formally cast their vote for the winning candidate.

Those votes are then officially counted at a certification in Washington, D.C. in early January

There are 110 Electoral College votes likely in play between key swing states and states with narrow-margin polling.

Pennsylvania’s 19 votes offers the biggest bounty of them, making it a big target for both candidates and a must-watch state as the votes are tallied on Nov. 5

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: How Pa will use the Electoral College to decide presidential election