Every four years we have a conversation about the Electoral College.

A debate really, it happens around presidential election and then gently fades away and we move on.

But just like everything else about this next presidential election, the conversation about

the Electoral College is ramping up early.

Elizabeth Warren said she wants to get rid of it at a CNN town hall this week.

We can have national voting and that means get rid of the Electoral College.

Mayor Pete's on the same page.

The Electoral College needs to go because it's made our society less and less democratic.

Kamala Harris, she's not crazy about it either.

The popular vote has been diminished in terms of making the final decision about who's the president of the United States and we need to deal with that.

Andy Rue levych knows more about the Electoral College than most.

The Electoral College is basically a mechanism for having separate elections that add up to one national election.

He's a professor of government at Bowdoin College.

There's one elector per state for every member of Congress.

So you wind up with 535 people, right?

100 senators, 435 representatives and then we add on three more for the District of Columbia.

538 party loyalists, 270 is the magic number to win.

So that when we vote for a president, we're not voting for the president directly,

but in fact for a slate of electors in our state who will then vote for the president.

Which is confusing.

If we think of democracy as purely one person one vote, this violates that philosophical tenant.

But it starts out as a compromise at the constitutional convention between those who wanted a popular vote for the president and those who wanted the Congress to choose the president.

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