There's an official explanation of the Electoral College but, to me, the way it shakes down is that there are effectively two different elections being held.

One is the one vote, one person election- the people's voice. This is the one that Gore won in 2000. The people's favorite usually is the same as that of the electoral college.

However, there are and have been exceptions.

The Electoral College consists of the states' votes. Each state has two senate votes and x number of representative votes, depending on the population in that state. For instance, Alaska is a big state physically but is very lightly populated, so we have two senators as everyone does but just one representative, which makes us a non-interesting state to campaigning candidates. On the other hand, California, New York, Florida, Illinois, among others, are densely populated states and they are of vital importance. The winning candidate has to garner at least one vote more than half of the electoral votes.

The electoral college is not voted on by the people; instead the states's voters vote for a slate of delegates, and that becomes the Electoral College. The delegates will attend the election night activities and the delegates are the ones who are allowed to abandon the candidate in whose name they were sent in order to throw their votes to a perceived winner. That frequently happens, but usually not until a second or third vote when the deals start being struck.

In 2000, the difficulty was that the electoral college was dependent on the outcome of a very close race. The people's vote was for Gore, but Florida's corrupted political process and its outdated hardware kept the numbers from being known.

In a normal election Florida's problems would probably have been scarcely noticed because previously it wasn't crucial to the election.

I'm sure I have greatly over-simplified the process, and am just plain wrong on a number of things but to me, that's how it shakes down.