As the 2008 presidential election nears, our mode of choosing the commander in chief -- the Electoral College system -- is as unpopular as ever. Several members of Congress this year introduced legislation to abolish it; this newspaper has written that the time has come for us to "drop out." Critics of the Electoral College claim that producing a president by a direct popular vote would be an improvement. But they would be wise to contemplate the consequences of such a dramatic reform and revisit the reasons the American founders created it in the first place.

The Electoral College requires candidates to seek the support of a broad cross-section of the national electorate. Because a nominee for president needs to attain majorities in dozens of states, his appeal must be to a vast and diverse array of interests. For example, under the Electoral College, a presidential candidate ignores agricultural affairs at his peril, because farmers, who constitute a small percentage of the total national vote, are nevertheless critical to winning swing states like those in the Midwest. Small towns and rural regions receive attention in national campaigns because their voters are needed to secure geographically diverse states such as Ohio, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. A successful bid for the White House calls for a candidate to speak to the interests and values of small-town America.

If attaining the most votes nationally were all that mattered, nominees would turn a deaf ear to the rural electorate. Under a direct-election system, candidates would simply expend energy in those areas where they could derive the most total votes. Major metropolitan media markets would be the sole battleground in presidential elections; New York, Texas and California would be king. Of course, populous states and cities are already important under the Electoral College; the votes they represent can never go ignored. But under a direct-election scheme their power would be plenary.

The Electoral College also brings definitiveness to a close presidential race. While the election of 2000 was a challenging episode in the history of American democracy, it would have been far worse with a direct election. Because the dispute was localized to a few counties in Florida, there was at least some semblance of order. Had this been a direct election, both political parties would have searched the country high and low for any kind of discrepancy to bolster their own candidate's popular vote total and discredit the other's. Rather than challenges just in Florida, there likely would have been hundreds of legal disputes all over the country. (There are 200,000 polling places in the United States, and Bush and Gore were separated by only one half of one percent in the popular vote count.) Resolution may have been impossible before Inauguration Day.

Our system also exerts an often overlooked moderating influence on even the most divisive national campaigns. Republicans cannot win by merely running up vote totals in deep red states. Democrats cannot win by securing massive totals in dark blue states. "Turning out the base" remains a component of any race, but the Electoral College also forces candidates to appeal to independent voters in unlikely places. It requires the victor ultimately to assemble broad coalitions with a nationwide foundation.

Even the most orthodox of majoritarians should take solace in the fact that the current Electoral College misfires, so to speak, very rarely; prior to 2000, the last time a president was elected without winning the popular vote was in 1888. Those who feel the popular vote winner ought to always win the White House should rest assured that such a result is already almost always provided for by the Electoral College. Is it truly worth changing our system of election that operates so magnificently to prevent this once in a century occurrence? The benefits would be to guarantee the impossibility of what is already a rarity; the costs -- damage to American federalism, harm to political minorities and the end of rural influence in presidential campaigns -- would be severe.

In defending the Electoral College, John F. Kennedy said, "It is not only the unit vote for president we are talking about, but a whole solar system of governmental power. If it is proposed to change the balance of power of one of the elements of the system, it is necessary to consider the others." The Electoral College has served the American Republic well for over 200 years. We should not change it in haste.

Andy Brehm, 28, is a Minneapolis attorney. He is former press secretary to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and a regular panelist on TPT's "Almanac."