Though the Legislature has considered it four times before, it’s only now that the National Popular Vote Compact is getting the kind of sustained public attention it has long deserved. When I testified two years ago, it was a lonely occasion; now, the compact is receiving healthy debate. 

To a serious extent, however, the question of whether voters should choose the president directly has been misstated. As on so many political issues – and this may be the ultimate political issue – we seem divided into two camps. 

We’re told one side wants to “abolish the Electoral College,” while the other wants to preserve it. Yet there is no “Electoral College,” and never has been. 

What we have are “Electors,” specified by the Constitution. These electors gather at state capitals every four years, a month after Election Day decided everything else, from congressional races down to the city council. 

The “electoral college” never meets; its “members” do not communicate. It’s an antique ritual that normally ratifies the voters’ choice – except when it doesn’t, as has happened in five of our 58 presidential elections. 

Unfortunately, in two of the last five, the candidate with the highest vote total lost. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court installed a president with a 5-4, unsigned order terminating Florida’s recount. In 2016, the candidate with three million more votes – a 2% margin – didn’t win because of a few thousand votes in several large, Midwestern states. These disruptive outcomes may continue. 

As a result, confidence in the fairness of our national election has plummeted. Millions of people don’t vote because they don’t believe their vote matters – and, unfortunately, unless they’re in a “battleground state,” they’re probably right. 

If you live in Texas or California, New York or Alabama, your state’s electoral vote was decided long before anyone cast a ballot. Much as we’d like to think there are many reasons to vote, this is the big one – why turnout in presidential years is much higher. 

If there was a simple, uncomplicated way to avoid this, you’d think we’d embrace it; large majorities have long favored using the popular vote. The National Popular Vote Compact is just such a solution. 

By pledging electors to the national winner, rather than for individual states, as soon as states representing 270 electors agree, it’s done: No more battleground states. Every vote counts, and every vote counts equally. 

That’s not the way opponents see it. They suggest there’s something dangerous about using the popular vote, even if we decide every other election that way, as do all other major democracies for their leaders. 

Critics say the popular vote would turn things over to “cities,” or disadvantage “small states” like Maine. These are dubious claims, but understandable, given the murky constitutional history. 

The proceedings of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 do record a compromise between those who wanted a direct popular vote, and those who preferred that Congress elect the president. But since a president chosen by Congress would be subordinate to the legislative branch, electors became the alternative. 

This had nothing to do with not trusting the voters, as is often alleged. The voters of the day – free, white, property-owning males – were nearly indistinguishable from the Founders themselves. Indirect election was essential, though, to balancing voting power between free and slave states – something not in the written record. 

The Constitution not only legitimized slavery, but gave slave states extra congressional representatives – and electors – to implement the notorious “three-fifths” clause that perpetuated slavery. A direct popular vote was impossible. The two Senate seats that provide the “small state” advantage were designed to increase representation in Congress, not in presidential voting – though it is a byproduct. 

After the Civil War, slavery was abolished, but electors remained. The system had produced the disputed election of 1824, decided in the House of Representatives, then malfunctioned again, choosing a minority president in 1876 and in 1892. 

The current debate focuses largely on who benefits from the status quo. Both sides should realize that outcomes in 2000 and 2016 were unpredictable, and it’s by no means obvious one party will continue to benefit. 

In 2004, John Kerry could have won the presidency despite losing the popular vote, and would have with a few thousand more votes in Ohio. Similarly, in 2012 plausible scenarios forecast Mitt Romney winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote. 

What we should be able to agree on is scrapping the elector system. It has no real purpose in the world’s oldest functioning democracy – and calling it a “republic” doesn’t change anything. 

The “winner take all” distribution of state electoral votes, for instance, wasn’t what the Founders envisioned. They expected electors to use independent judgment, and in the early days they did. 

It was the disastrous 1824 election, which installed John Quincy Adams in the White House and one of his rivals, Henry Clay, as Secretary of State – to opponents, the “Corrupt Bargain” – that created a two-party system in every state. The presidential election became a set of state-by-state battles that now produces unhealthy polarization and heightened demagogic appeals in “swing” states. 

A free, fair election decided by popular vote would do more to dispel the dark clouds around our politics than any other single measure. If it happens by 2020, and people are pleased by the results, the next step would be to abolish the elector provisions of the Constitution by amendment – something that now seems impossible, but could seem inevitable once the political air clears. 

The discontent and discouragement many feel about the way our political system functions is too broad and deep to vanish in a moment, or one electoral cycle. Yet correcting the flaws in our constitutional system, as we have done repeatedly in the past, points the way toward recovery and renewal. 

Maine should add its voice to the 14 states that have already spoken – three of them this year – to fulfill the promise we make to all our people: that voting is the essence of what it means to be a citizen. 

Douglas Rooks has written about politics for four decades, and is the author, most recently, of Rise, Decline and Renewal: The Democratic Party in Maine.