Voting for the President

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/07/barack-obama-speech-full-text

This has taken a while (6 months) to come up with, because I just didn't understand it, and no amount of reading carefully worded explanations on the internet appeared to help me get my head around it.
Here is my best explanation that I can think of for how the President of the United States of America is voted into office.
The Presidential vote is not a direct popular vote. The president is voted in by a group called the US Electoral College, and each state gets the same amount of electoral college votes as they have representatives in Congress (ie, population based) EXCEPT territorial possessions (Guam and Peurto Rico) who don't get any say what so ever, and Washington DC (District of Columbia) that isn't a state, but gets the same amount of representatives as the least populous state.
I can't clear up whether the US Electoral College is made up of people, or theoretical people. I think I will go with the theory that it is actual people. Somehow this group is elected, and then they pledge votes to either side (generally, since 1868 it appears to have been a two party election between the Democrats and the Republicans). I don't know how they decide to pledge votes, but I'm guessing this is where the state election comes in - to decide for them? Then, the person with a majority of votes from the US Electoral College is the President. This is the same way that a Vice-President is selected, although I'm unsure if this means a lot as I presume that the VP chosen by the President will get in, since the voting obviously favours the President in the first place. States get to chose how their electoral college votes are decided - which is why people talk about a candidate 'winning' Ohio. And there is that map of the USA divided into red and blue. It is also why it is confusing as to exactly how the election for Electoral College goes, because there are a million and one (fifty two, max, I guess) exceptions to any method described.
But... There is a popular vote for the President, and I don't quite get the connection between this popular vote and the voting for the US Electoral College, and it is possible for someone to win the popular vote, but lose the US Electoral College vote. Although this happens rarely.
One downside is that voter turn out doesn't affect how many Electoral College votes a state gets, so voter participation isn't that important except in swinging states.