Every election in our country is decided by popular vote with one jarring exception - selecting the president of the United States. For this arguably most important office, we use the Electoral College, where the winning candidate must amass at least 270 electors before being confirmed as president.

Five times in our history - including most likely on Nov. 8 - the candidate with the highest number of popular votes did not win the presidency. Hillary Clinton is likely to wind up with about 100,000 more popular votes, even though Donald Trump won the election with 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232. When this column was written, no winner had been declared yet in Michigan, where Trump was leading.Going back to 1824, the first time the winner of the popular vote failed to become president, Andrew Jackson had 41.4 percent to John Quincy Adams' 30.1 percent. Jackson also led in the Electoral College vote, 99-84, but neither had the required number to be elected outright, so the contest was thrown into the U.S. House of Representatives, as provided by the Constitution, and the House selected Adams. There were four candidates for president, so 131 of the 261 electoral votes were needed.In one of the nation's most disputed elections (1876), Samuel Tilden had 51 percent of the popular vote to Rutherford B. Hayes' 48 percent, but Hayes had one more electoral vote than Tilden and became president. Twenty electoral votes that had been in dispute were awarded to Hayes following a contentious court battle.In 1888, incumbent Grover Cleveland had more popular votes than Benjamin Harrison, but Harrison had 233 Electoral College votes compared to 168 for Cleveland, so Harrison became president. Four years later, Cleveland beat Harrison, and became our only president with nonconsecutive terms.Then there was the disputed election of 2000 where Democrat Al Gore had about 500,000 more popular votes than Republican George W. Bush, but Bush had the required 270 electoral votes to become president.Most states have a "winner-take-all" system that awards all electors to the winning presidential candidate, however, Maine and Nebraska have a variation of "proportional representation."Electors, who are selected by the candidates' political parties, will meet on Dec. 19 to confirm their respective states' Electoral College votes. Since Trump won Pennsylvania, the 20 electors will be Republicans pledged to him. Although no elector is required by federal law to honor a pledge, there have been very few occasions when an elector voted contrary to a pledge.Each state's electoral votes will be counted in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. Vice President Joe Biden, as president of the Senate, presides over the count and announces the results. Trumpwill take the oath of office and will be sworn in as president of the United States on Jan. 20.So why are we still sticking with this archaic Electoral College rather than going to a straight popular vote as we do for virtually every other political contest? Some political science scholars believe that the framers of the Constitution chose the Electoral College to balance less populous with more populous states. The truth is that most of our fractious differences are between north and south and between coastal and interior populations, not between big and small.One of the most popular notions is that when the Constitution was framed in 1787, a wide swath of the nation was illiterate and spread out, and communication was arduous and not very effective. As such, the theory goes, the founders believed that ordinary Americans would lack enough information and expertise to make an intelligent choice. If this were true then, it hasn't been the situation for well over a century.In a provocative and controversial column in Time magazine, Akhil Reed Amar believes that slavery is what won the day in the debate over direct election and the creation of the Electoral College when delegates were debating what would go into the Constitution. There were four proposals: have Congress elect the president, have state governors do it, have state legislators pick the winner or have voters make the decision.Virginian and slaveholder James Madison argued that direct election of the president would never fly in the South. Pennsylvanian James Wilson is given credit for coming up with the Electoral College compromise, which greatly favored populous states such as Virginia. To prove his point, Amar noted that for the first 32 of 36 years after the ratification of the Constitution, a white slave-holding Virginian occupied the presidency.In those early elections, because of its high population of slaves, Virginia had 12 of 91 electoral votes. With 46 needed to win the presidency, Virginia had 26 percent of all electoral votes, giving homebred candidates George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Madison and James Monroe a big head start.Whatever the reason for the Electoral College when our country was first formed, none holds water today and hasn't for many years.It is time to consign the Electoral College to the scrapheap of history and choose our presidents by popular vote.By Bruce Frassinelli |

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