This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, October 17, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

With close presidential elections making recent history, the pushes on for the national popular vote to decide

future presidential elections.

John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Representative Government, says there

are a host of benefits to keeping our system of

electoral federalism relatively as is. Samples new analysis, a critique of the national popular

vote, is available at Cato.org.

The original idea about the Electoral College was to create an institution that was acceptable to the delegates at the Constitutional Convention

and what they came up with, they considered direct election along with election by Congress

uh... both of them were thought to have uh... you know

really bad shortcomings

so uh... they came up with a kind of deliberative indirect way that was state-based,

in which states would have the right to select electors,

who in turn would choose a presidential candidate from that state.

The things that, so we don't have that system now.

I mean, right now when the electors meet in December in the various state capitals, they won't deliberate, they won't, they will be pledged.

And almost all of them, if history is any God,

will vote for the person who won the state, right?

So that's a different system.

It came about for a variety of reasons. One was that the development of

political parties was not fully foreseen at the founding and political

...