There it was headlining in the national media, the place of my birth visited by then presidential candidate Al Gore. Normally the upper-Midwest town of 3,000 is unknown to all but the locals. But on that day it was in the limelight as a key location in a swing state. While the 15 minutes of fame have long passed, the notion persists that but for the Electoral College no presidential candidate would have visited that small town.

The pundits love to beat up on the Electoral College and in doing so miss one of its key advantages -- it forces the would be leaders to reach out to all of America and make the case in small towns, not just big ones, in small states not just big ones. Unlike Europe where proportional representation is found in many places, the American form of democracy (winner take all) frequently ignores the views of subsegments of the population. Contrary to the views of the critics who call it elitist, the Electoral College is one protection against the dictatorship of the majority.

Were we to go to a popular vote system, the focus of every election would shift to the high density population centers and large media markets, where it is much easier and more economical to motivate masses of people. The reality is that getting to northern Minnesota, rural Mississippi or southern New Mexico is time consuming, expensive and generally difficult. Candidates only go to these places because they might matter. In a popular vote system, an extra rally in Los Angeles or New York probably gathers hundreds more votes than weeks of hitting the small towns. Similarily, candidates reach out to segments of the population (gays in San Francisco, Hmong in Wisconsin, Hispanics in the Southwest, Mormons in the West) whose voting power is diluted on a national basis but can be significant in more localized voting. No doubt the demise of the Electoral College would push to the sidelines the smaller groups and make them non factors in national elections.

Individuals from big state will counter that it is unfair for a few smaller states to get all the attention. My response is simple -- large states have it in their power to change from a winner-take-all allocation of Electoral voting, to some other allocation which puts them back into play. They need no change in the constitution to effect this change. Today it is easy for the Democrats to take New York for granted, or the Republicans to take Texas for granted. Either state could decide on its own to shift away from winner-take-all. Such a shift would make less dense areas or hard to reach locations more important within their states. I would welcome that too.

America is a big place. A system that forces presidential candidates to get out there and see the vast country and woo voters of all income levels, ethnicities, religions is a good thing.