One of my readers (maybe the only reader) tells me that it time again for a lesson about the Electoral College...

Supporters of the electoral college say that we need to keep it because it “forces candidates to campaign in small states” and because the “Founding Fathers” decided that it was the fairest way to elect a president.

However, the Electoral College, in my opinion, is an antiquated and outmoded system that has given the highest office in the country to the loser in the actual election seven (7) times in U.S. history. I fear it will do so again on Tuesday, but that’s another matter. Here’s a brief summary of the sordid history of the electoral college:
2000:
Bush 50,456,002 47.87%
Gore 50,999,897 48.38%
Note: Other candidates – like Buchanan and Nader, took more than a million and a half votes away from the two major candidates. Without them, the outcome would have been different – either Gore would have won the electoral college as well as the popular vote, or Bush might have won both the popular vote and the electoral college.

1960 (Kennedy/Nixon)
1968 (Nixon/Humphrey – this was the start of campaigns that focused solely on “battleground” states. Nixon had seen it go the other way once, and was not about to let it happen again.)
1976 (Carter/Ford)

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote AND the electoral college, but in a four-man race, he failed to earn 50% of either. So the House of representatives decided the race, and picked John Quincy Adams, who had come in third.

In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote, but Rutherford B. Hayes won the electoral college (after the only “Congressional commission” in U.S. history sorted things out in Hayes’ favor several months after the election).

In 1888, Grover Cleveland won the popular vote, but Benjamin Harrison won the electoral college.