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The Federal Reserve makes sure that individual states "know their responsiblities" in pledging their electoral votes, said the Federal Register's Director of Legal Affairs and Policy Amy Bunk in a lecture at the National Archives.
According to Bunk, the electors of each state act as "go betweens" of State and Congress. The number of electors is determined by the number of representatives and senators a state has in Congress. There are a total of 538 electors in the U.S. every presidential election year.

Although electors almost always pledge their vote to the candidate that wins the popular vote of the state, Bunk said there have been cases of "faithless electors." She said that one example occurred in 2004 when one of Minnesota's 10 electors gave their vote to John Edwards for president instead of John Kerry.

On January 6, "Congress will meet to count the votes" of this year's electors. Bunk said that while the electors determine the presidency, the public's "votes do count" under our current system.