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No one likes the Electoral College, expect perhaps those who were elected because of it. No one likes gerrymandering, except those doing the gerrymandering. No one likes the filibuster, except those doing the filibustering.

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.

The Electoral College was necessary when communications were poor, literacy was low, and voters lacked information about out-of-state figures, which is clearly no longer the case.

Last I looked - and I'm not a candidate - but last time I checked reading about the Constitution, the Electoral College has nothing to do with parties, has absolutely nothing to do with parties. It's most states are winners take all.

Presidents are elected not by direct popular vote but by 538 members of the Electoral College.

Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.

Let's not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let's give importance to the real democracy that's constructed on a day-to-day basis. That's my hopeful perspective on it.

Sometimes in politics, you get a wallop in the electoral process.

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols.

Despite its flaws, the American electoral system has produced Lincoln, the two Roosevelts, and Harry Truman.