Country is electing its 15th president today with National Democratic Alliance candidate Droupadi Murmu facing off against opposition's joint nominee and former BJP leader Yashwant Sinha.

Elected MLAs and MPs across the country are voting today to elect a new President as Ram Nath Kovind’s tenure ends on July 25.

The President is elected by indirect election. This means that the President is elected by the Electoral College. The people of the country do not directly elect the President themselves, but the representatives elected by people vote to elect the President. This is called indirect election. In this process, the right to vote is with the elected MLAs and MPs. Nominated members of Parliament and members of Legislative Councils cannot vote in presidential elections, as they are not directly elected by the people. Presidential Election 2022: Who is Draupadi Murmu? Here is Everything You Need to Know About NDA’s Presidential Candidate

The weightage of votes of MPs and MLAs who participate in the Presidential elections is different. The weightage of votes of MLAs of two different states is also different. The population of the state is the main parameter for the weightage. After this, the population of the state is divided by the number of elected MLAs and then it is divided by 1000. The score obtained after this is the actual weightage of the vote of that state. The total value of all the members of each state assembly is worked out by multiplying the number of elective seats in the house by the number of votes for each member. Presidential Election 2022: Opposition's Candidate Yashwant Sinha Files Nomination; Here is Everything You Need to Know About Him

In highly populated states like Uttar Pradesh, an MLA carries a vote value of 208, while less populated states like Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the value of vote for an MLA is 8.

The total value of votes of all the states added together is divided by the total number of elected members of Parliament (Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha) to get the value of votes of each MP.

As the presidential election is held as per the system of proportional representation by means of single transferable vote, every elector has as many preferences as the candidates contesting the elections. The winning candidate has to secure the required quota of votes to be declared elected, i.e., 50% of valid votes polled +1.

The combined value of votes of state legislators is 5,43,231 and that of MPs is 5,43,200, hence the total number of votes is 10,86,431.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 18, 2022 11:07 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).