The system: how the electoral college works

It was a constitutional disaster waiting to happen. Last week it did. Al Gore won a majority of votes in the American elections, but George W Bush could yet secure the presidency.

The electoral college could thwart the democratic choice of the nation. It is not only outsiders who are learning about the intricacies of the electoral college. So are many Americans. They are discovering it is an anachronism, an institutional artefact of America's history. While a louder chorus of discontent focuses this weekend on the format of the Palm Beach ballot paper, the future of the electoral college presents a burning question - much more significant in the longer term about how the United States runs its elections.

When Americans voted on Tuesday, strictly speaking they did not choose Bush, Gore, or Nader. Instead, they chose a slate of state delegates to the electoral college. There are 538 of them in total. Each state has the same number of votes in the electoral college as it has members of the US Congress. In every state bar two - Maine and Nevada, where the votes can be split among candidates according to their performance at the polls - all the electoral votes are expected to be cast for the candidate who wins the popular vote.

The trouble is that members of the electoral college have no legal commitment to voting for the candidate to whom they were pledged. In principle, they can defect to another candidate. Over the past week, some observers have speculated that a number of electors pledged to Bush might defer to the popular vote and throw the election to Gore.

In practice, this outcome is unlikely. It is the state parties that select the electors, usually as a reward for loyal activists. The ardent Republicans who are Bush's delegates can hardly be expected to vote for Gore.

The ability of the electoral college to decide against the democratic will of the people seems a puzzle, but the electoral college is undemocratic by design. The framers of the American Constitution believed that under a system of direct election the president would become slavishly responsive to popular passions. They created the electoral college as a body of wise and thoughtful individuals, dedicated to choosing a statesmanlike leader who would govern in the interests of the country.

Times have changed but the electoral college remains. In most elections, it distorts the result by giving the winner of the popular vote a much larger majority of electoral votes.

But, as Americans learned last week, it also has the power to distort the result by preventing the real winner from reaching the White House. It has happened before. On three occasions in the 19th century (in 1824, 1876, and 1888), the electoral college did not award victory to the winner of the popular vote.

During closely contested campaigns of the 20th century, there were sometimes fears - always unrealised - that its idiosyncracies would again cause the national winner to lose. The first election of the 21st century finally exposed the shortcomings of the electoral college in the modern era. A debate about its reform has already started. If Bush is confirmed as the winner in Florida and therefore as the new president, the momentum for change is sure to build.

But the electoral college might yet survive as a reminder of America's roots in the 18th century, when excessive democracy was distrusted and "mob rule" considered a danger. The nation's founding fathers made the Constitution extraordinarily difficult to amend. The route to amendment demands large majorities in Congress and the support of most states. This obstacle was great enough to prevent previous efforts to reform the electoral college.

Over the years, more than 700 reform proposals have failed. In the coming months, as voices of criticism grow louder, defenders of the status quo will fight back. While there is no guarantee the electoral college will choose the winner of the popular vote, it maintains the concept of America as a federal union of diverse states.

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