The New York Times’ poll-aggregating oddsmaker Nate Silver currently puts the chances of President Obama winning the Electoral College at about 86%, but his chances of winning the popular vote at only 51%.

In other words, there is a very real chance — a 6.9% chance according to Silver — that President Obama could win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote, as happened to President George W. Bush in his race against Al Gore in 2000.

In case you were sleeping through the film strip in Civics Class the day they covered the Constitutional Convention and the Virginia Plan, the Electoral College is what counts.   Quite incredibly, the United States of America is the only democracy on the planet where candidates can and do become the national leader without having won the highest number of votes.

How embarrassing is that?   If any other nation calling itself a “democracy” was handing over power to the popular vote loser, we would rightfully denounce them.  Among other problems, the Electoral College-based system:

• Goes against the whole principle of “one man one vote” that we preach to the rest of the world.

• Effectively disenfranchises voters in non-swing states.

• Discourages democratic participation in non-swing states.

• Is needlessly complex, which breeds popular distrust and consequently weakens the legitimacy of our whole system of government.

Don’t get me wrong, if either Romney or Obama gets reelected without a popular vote plurality, he fully deserves to win.  After all, both candidates structured their campaign operations to win the Electoral College, not the popular vote, because that’s what our idiotic system demands of candidates.

Still, that doesn’t mean that Obama should embrace the Electoral College idiocy, even if it works to his benefit.  President Obama has opposed the Electoral College in the past, and he should oppose it now.

If Obama does take office without a popular vote plurality, imagine how powerful it would be for him to stand up with former President Bush to say something like this:

“I won election without having won a plurality of the popular vote, just as President Bush did in 2000.

That happened because the current Electoral College system demanded that both Governor Romney and I spend the vast majority of our campaign time, effort and resources in a small handful of swing states, to the near exclusion of all others.  Obviously, all candidates structure their campaigns to fit the election rules on the books, and that’s what we did.

So while we don’t apologize for playing by the Electoral College rules we were given, we do stand today in bipartisan unity to say that the Electoral College that benefited both of us makes no sense for the greatest democracy on Earth.  We are standing together to start a bipartisan drive to abolish the Electoral College in favor of a simple popular vote based system that is more true to our American values.”

It would be very powerful to have two Presidents of opposing parties who have benefited from the Electoral College system advocate it’s abolishment.  Suddenly, the argument for getting rid of the Electoral College system could not be said to be partisan or self-serving.  The two men could mobilze the bipartisan majority — 56% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats, according to Gallup — that already supports abolishing the Electoral College.

For the credibility of America’s democracy, let’s hope our next President wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College.  But if he doesn’t, let’s hope the beneficiary uses the event as a platform to change this silly system once and for all.

-Loveland