Is there a chance that a candidate under direct election could win a plurality of the vote by carrying one big state by a large margin but win no other states? Could a candidate enjoy extraordinary support in a state as diverse as, say, California, and lack substantial support in other areas of the country? Such a scenario is quite farfetched. There is nothing in American history that would lead one to believe that such an outcome is a realistic possibility.

The Electoral College did not prevent class appeals by Democratic candidates such as Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 or Harry Truman in 1948. Nor did it prevent the election of ideologues on the right such as Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. These, and others, were polarizing elections in which differences of opinion among the coalitions supporting the candidates were considerable.

If Al Gore had received 538 more votes in Florida in 2000, he would have been elected president. If Ralph Nader had not been on the ballot in either Florida or New Hampshire in 2000, Gore would have won.

Advocates of the Electoral College are in the position of having to argue that Bush was the proper winner but that if either of these changes had occurred, Gore would have been the proper winner—proper because the Electoral College elected him—even though Bush's coalition would not have changed by one vote. Such an argument is simply nonsense.

STATES' INTERESTS—Some argue that the Electoral College balances local and national interests, protecting small states from majoritarian politics. It is not clear what might be protected.

States do not embody coherent, unified interests to protect. Even the smallest state has substantial diversities of interest and opinion within it. Thus, Alaska may have a Democratic governor and two Republican senators, and Montana and North and South Dakota can vote for Republican presidential candidates and then send two liberal Democrats—now minus one, Tom Daschle—to the U.S. Senate.

Nor is there a need for protection. Given the many constraints the Constitution places on the actions that simple majorities can take, the Senate's extraordinary representation of small states, the power of the Senate filibuster to thwart majorities, and the difficulty of changing these rules, it strains credulity to argue that certain geographically concentrated interests require additional protection from the majoritarian political process.

States with small populations do not have common interests to protect. Instead, they represent a great diversity of core economic interests, including mining, gambling, chemicals, tourism, energy and agriculture, ranging from grain and dairy products to hogs and sheep. Most farmers live in states with large populations, such as California, Texas, Florida and Illinois. It is not surprising that small-state representatives don't vote as a bloc in Congress or that their citizens don't vote as a bloc for president. The great political battles of American history have been over ideology and economic interests rather than between small and large states.

Do presidents focus on local interests in building their electoral coalitions? They do not. We have seen that candidates ignore most of the country in their campaigns. In addition, I have shown in my book that candidates do not focus on local interests in the states in which they do campaign.

Nowhere in the vast literature on voting in presidential elections has anyone found that voters choose candidates on the basis of their stands on state and local issues. Indeed, candidates avoid such issues, because they do not want to be seen in the rest of the country as pandering to special local interests. In addition, once elected the president has little to do with local issues. There is no reason and certainly no imperative to campaign on these issues.

Two of the most important architects of the Constitution, James Wilson and James Madison, understood well the diversity of state interests and the protections of minorities embodied in the Constitution. They saw little need to confer additional power to small states through the Electoral College. "Can we forget for whom we are forming a government?" Wilson asked. "Is it for men, or for the imaginary beings called States?" Madison was equally dubious, proclaiming that experience had shown no danger of state interests being harmed and that "the President is to act for the people not for States."

Congress is designed to be responsive to constituency interests. The president, as Madison pointed out, is to take a broader view. When advocates of the Electoral College express concern that direct election of the president would suppress local interests in favor of the broader national interest, they are supporting a presidency responsive to parochial interests in a system that is already prone to gridlock, and that offers minority interests extraordinary access to policymakers and opportunities to thwart policies they oppose.

The Electoral College violates basic democratic principles and does not offer the country benefits to compensate for this disadvantage. We do not require a runoff between the top two candidates. We elect presidents without majority votes all the time (as in 1992, 1996 and 2000).

What we need to do is to count all the votes and declare the candidate who receives the most votes the winner.