September 20th,

24.

On September 16th, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten wrote that, while it's pretty clear that Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris is ahead nationally right now,

her advantage in the battlegrounds is basically nil.

Average at all, Harris's chance of winning the popular vote

is 70%.

Her chance of winning the Electoral College is 50 percent.

Two days later, on September 18th, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina,

skipped votes in the Senate to travel to Nebraska,

where he tried to convince state legislators to switch the state system of

allotting electoral votes by district to a winner-take-all system.

That effort so far appears unsuccessful.

In a country of 50 states and Washington, D.C.

a country of more than 330 million people.

Presidential elections are decided in just a handful of states,

and it's possible for someone who loses the popular vote to become president.

We got to this place thanks to the Electoral College and to two major changes made to it since

the ratification of the Constitution. The men who debated how to elect a

president in 1787 worried terribly about making sure there were hedges around the

strong executive they were creating so that he could not become a king.

Some of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention wanted Congress to choose the president,

but this horrified others who believed that a leader

...