It seems that as more and more time passes, my appreciation for the ingenuity of our Founding Fathers grows.

I am writing this before I know the result of the election. They stand behind a “veil of ignorance,” not knowing in advance who will win the popular vote and who will win in the Electoral College.

We have a growing movement to replace the Electoral College with a winner-take-all National Popular Vote. This is supported by some influential voices on both sides of the political spectrum.

But there are so many reasons why the single-vote system for president is so important to our republic. And thankfully, we are a republic – not a majoritarian or mob-ruled “democracy”.

So here’s a quick civics lesson on the wisdom of the Electoral College.

First: we are a confederation of states. The power of the federal government is derived from the states and the people. Washington is not the center of the universe. Power is distributed throughout America. New York and Washington don’t rule our country—even if they think they do.

The Electoral College assigns power to each state — and protects states’ primacy. It is central to our system of federalism. America is unique in the world in our system of checks and balances, decentralized government power, and protection of minority rights.

Without the Electoral College, eight to ten large states would determine the election. California has a larger population than nine small states combined. However, California, for all its virtues, is far from representative of our diverse country.

Would any candidate care about voters in Nebraska or New Hampshire or Nevada or Maine or Alaska or Iowa, given that California has more voters than all of them combined?

They wouldn’t even bother to ever go to those states and instead would follow to the last vote in Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bronx.

Second, the Electoral College dramatically reduces voter fraud. The incentive to engage in illegal voting schemes in the big cities – red and blue – would be incredible and impossible to police. Cemeteries would be full of voters on election day.

Under current electoral rules, the gains from stuffing ballot boxes in deep red and deep blue areas are reduced. However, in a National Popular Vote, even a few hundred thousand illegal ballots in major cities would result in the total disenfranchisement of every voter in North and South Dakota.

Stolen elections could become the rule, not the exception.

Some complain that because we have had elections where the candidate who wins the popular vote does not win the election, the system is undemocratic. I would argue that these occasional results only make the Electoral College all the more indispensable to keeping our country intact.

The system is not perfect and something needs to be done about the risks of “faithless voters” who could change the outcome of the election.

However, just like in tennis, where the player with the most points does not always win the match, the current voting rules help protect our democracy, not undermine it.

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