The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The Electoral college process consits of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for the President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes byCongress. The Electoral College consits of 538 electors. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.

Under the electoral college system, voters vote not for thePresident, but for a slate of electors, who in turn elect the President. The single best argument against the electoral college is what we might call the disaster factor. The American people should consider themselves lucky that the 2000 fiasco was the biggest election crisis in a century; the system allows much worse. Considering thst the state legislatures are technically responsible for picking electors, end that those electors could always defy the will of the people. Back in 1960, segregationists in the Louisiana legislature nearly succeeded in replacing the Democratic electors with new electors who would oppose John F. Kennedy. (So that a popular vote for Kennedy wouldn't have actually gone to Kennedy.)

At the most basic level, the electoral college is unfair to voters. Because of the winner-take-all system in each state, candidates don't spend time in states they know they have no chance of winning, focusing only on the tight races in the "swing" states. It's offical: The electoral college is unfair, outdated, and irrational. The best arguments in favor of it are mostly assertions without much basis in reality. And the argument against direct elections are spurious at best. It's hard to say this, but Bob Dole was right: "Abolish the electoral college!"

Abolishing the Electoral college should be the right thing to do.