the electoral college

Christopher Hitchens has now published two pieces, back to back, one in The Nation endorsing Bush, and one in Slate endorsing Kerry. What an apropos omen that this will indeed be as close an election as everyone is predicting. Except me. I still maintain that this will be a landslide for Bush. But if I am wrong, and it is close, and, God forbid, we have another election in which the winner of the popular vote loses in the electoral college, it is inevitable that there will be an outcry demanding a constitutional amendment to get rid of this supposedly ananchronistic institution. So, as a pre-emptive strike, I would like to direct the reader to a brief and excellent article in the LA Times defending said institution. Here is the concluding paragraph:

Yes, the electoral college is easy to poke fun at. Yes, it occasionally frustrates the will of the plurality or majority. But the founding fathers understood the dangers of direct democracy and struggled to create a system that reflected the will of the people while constraining the majority. The electoral college serves those ends well.

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