First of all, the men who drafted the constitution were the leaders of the American revolution, which means that they were much closer to modern day readers of the World than to the leaders of the two parties.

But they were not "small d" democrats. Democracy for them was the rule of the mob and the state they created was a property holders’ republic.

Those without property, including large numbers of white males, had no say in electing their representatives.

They were also merchant and artisan capitalists, wealthy landowners, and, in the South, slaveholders.

The Electoral College they created provided protection for the smaller states in choosing the president, especially the slave states.

Because of the 3/5 compromise over slavery, these states had "3/5" of their slaves counted in the population for seats in the House and votes in the Electoral College.

In the decades before the Civil War, farmers and workers fought for suffrage, which came to mean universal white male suffrage; democracy became the term to define the country, although it meant different things to different people:

For workers and poor farmers it meant economic and social rights , unions, movements for public land distribution, against slavery, for women’s rights, and for various reforms grew under the banner of democracy.

For the ruling class it meant and means something very different

Most of the presidents before the Civil War and all of the important ones, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson and Polk were slaveholders.

Ironically, Jackson, founder in the 1830s of the modern Democratic Party, was the first presidential candidate to lead in the popular vote in 1824 and lose the presidency – lacking a majority in the Electoral College.

Jackson, the Tennessee slaveholder and general, saw the his enemies in the House of Representatives give the election to John Quincy Adams, the son of a former president who had, as Secretary of State, acquired Florida from Spain.

For Jackson and most other ruling class politicians, democracy meant democracy for whites only.

It meant what a prominent American historian called "Herrenvolk" (master race) democracy – that is, the right to vote restricted to white males and "progress" achieved through conquering the West, driving out the Indians (native peoples) and protecting the "peculiar institution" of slavery.

The old two-party system of Whigs and Democrats defended all of that until the rise of the Republican Party and the revolutionary consequences of the Civil War destroyed the slaveholder class and created a new, more powerful and more democratic national government.

This advanced rapid industrial capitalist development and made the Electoral College out of date.

The Electoral College reared its head again in 1876, when Republican politicians, already having retreated massively from the attempt to democratize the South (the process was called Reconstruction) symbolically betrayed four million former slaves.

They did this by striking a deal with white supremacy southern Democrats to take federal troops out of the last three southern states with Reconstruction governments, granting "home rule" to the old planter class and KKK killers for whom "conservatism" and white supremacy were one and the same.

Their purpose was to hold the presidency for their candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes, even though he had run second in the popular vote.

Given the vastly increased powers of the presidency over the generations, the anti-democratic Electoral College has become an appendix to politics, harmless until an election like this makes it flare up.

Unless you believe that the president – who has his finger on a nuclear trigger that can destroy the world and his enormous military, political and economic power over the people of the world – should be chosen by the states in a system that favors southern and rural western states over the urban industrial Northeast, the industrial Midwest, and the Pacific Coast, the Electoral College is archaic.

In Bush wins this election by somehow carrying Florida, it will be these states, the Taft-Hartley right-to-work (for less) states, and the former slave states, all of whom, except for Maryland, will have voted for him.

In the endless commentary on butterfly ballots, one should also remember such ballots exist because many of these states don’t even spend the money for modern voting machines, preferring cheap paper ballots that are much more subject to mishandling and corruption.

Conservative commentators and spin doctors aside, if Bush wins, it will be because he wins in the courts, either in a federal judicial system packed by Republicans and Clinton Democrats or a Florida state system filled with conservative Democrats.

The Center-Left vote really won this election, meaning the Gore-Nader vote produced a clear majority against Bush and the right, and, outside of the South, a large majority by U.S. political standards.

Labor and the Nader forces basically won this election on the issues. Thanks to labor, Al Gore, whatever serious damage was done to him by the Nader vote, won the election in the popular vote, and unless thousands of Floridians are disenfranchised by local election officials and the courts, in, the Electoral College.

The Nader campaign should be commended for raising the issues of repeal of Taft-Hartley, a $10 minimum wage, opposition to NAFTA, reduction of the military budget, and an anti-imperialist foreign policy.

Al Gore should also be commended for separating himself late in the campaign from many of the Clinton domestic policies, appealing to progressive voters, and refusing to hand the presidency over to Bush on a silver platter, as virtually everything else has been handed to him throughout his life.

Along with restricting the role of money in politics, providing media access for minority parties, eliminating the electoral college through constitutional amendment is a reasonable political reform.

When the Electoral Collage was created, only people with enough property could vote.

Today, the class that controls corporate wealth uses that wealth to buy politicians and parties and sell them to the public through media advertising.

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.