WITH THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION just around the corner and the serious phase of the campaign looming after Labor Day, many signs point to another extremely close presidential election. There's nothing like the prospect of a repeat of 2000--a virtual tie on Election Day, leading to recounts and legal battles of rare ferocity and bitterness--to drive home the desirability of a decisive result. Whoever the next president is, may his victory be plain.

When that normal outcome didn't happen in 2000, the effect on our politics was corrosive. True, the American people at large had no trouble accepting the decision produced by the working of our institutional arrangements; there never was any danger of governmental instability or insurrection in the streets. But the fact that the Electoral College winner placed second in the national popular vote (by 543,895 votes out of 100,000,000 cast) understandably rankles, and among Bush's more extreme critics, the belief that he is an illegitimate president is often present, sometimes expressed.

The polite version of this charge is that he is an "undemocratic" president, the product of a uniquely "undemocratic" feature of our political system. The United States is "the only democracy in the world that allows a popular-vote loser to win an election," mistakenly claimed a critique of Bush in the July 26 New Republic. In fact, British-style parliamentary systems can produce precisely that--a prime minister whose party won fewer popular votes than its chief rival--and do so far more commonly than our Electoral College. In the British elections

With the home stretch near, it's not too soon to brush up on just what our rules are. Since the detailed workings of the Electoral College are intricate and arcane, it's advisable to get a copy of After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College, especially the up to date Third Edition edited by John C. Fortier and published by the AEI Press this year. It explains the rules that apply in almost every conceivable eventuality. (What if a major candidate dies? What if state recounts are not complete when the electors vote?) It also lays out the history of the disputed elections of 1800, 1824, 1876, and 2000, and presents intelligent arguments both for and against the Electoral College.

Law professors Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar, who favor replacing the Electoral College, remind us of the Founders' reasons for devising this contraption. The Founders' "key objection" to direct election of the president, they say, was not any anti-democratic impulse but the poor communications of the day. Voters "would likely lack information about which out-of-state figure would be best for the presidency." The same Constitution-writers who provided for direct election of the House of Representatives every two years also feared that "ordinary Americans across a vast continent would lack sufficient information to choose intelligently among leading presidential candidates."