Just imagine if the outcome of the presidential election of 2000 had been different. Al Gore would be President; the Supreme Court would not have been involved with deciding a Presidential election; and "W" would just be a former Governor of Texas and not the former President of the United States. Looking back at other, earlier presidential elections, what if the following were true: In 1824, Andrew Jackson defeated John Quincy Adams; in 1876, Samuel Tilden defeated Rutherford B. Hayes and in 1888, Grover Cleveland defeated Benjamin Harrison? Without the old (and current) system using the Electoral College that is exactly what could have happened. The President of the United States is not chosen through a national popular vote because the framers of the Constitution adopted the Electoral College, which gives each state as many votes as it has members of Congress. The system was created as a middle ground in the debate over whether Congress or voters would have the power to elect the president. Serious discussion of the so-called "Electoral College" was one minor casualty of the thirty-six days of legal and political maneuvering accompanying the Florida recount that ultimately decided the presidential election of 2000. With the realization that the runner-up in the national popular vote could very well inherit the White House, there was renewed interest in the workings of the Electoral College. The rationale for the winner-take all of appointing electors that has prevailed in nearly every state since the early nineteenth century attracted new, critical scrutiny. Defenders of the Electoral College profess to see numerous cautionary advantages to this state-based system of electing a president. It is said to support a healthier process of aggregating the choices of the people than would a simple election in a single national constituency, replacing a crude and perhaps too democratic form of majority rule with a healthier constitutional form that places more importance on the ability to carry numerous provincial constituencies. Today there is still support for electing the president by a national popular vote, eliminating the process of allocating electors among states by rules that violate the principle of one person, one vote. However, there are those who say that the Electoral College is an essential feature of the grand design of a truly federal republic and remains as one of the greatest legacies of the founding era. Many believe that an attack on the federal aspects of the Electoral College would ultimately threaten federalism itself. There are essentially two fundamental flaws with the Electoral College. One is that it vi