Ms. Savoy's letter to the editor yesterday shows that she fails to understand the original intent of the Electoral College.

It is a myth that the "Electoral College was started to protect an uninformed society from making bad choices." If this was indeed the case, why weren't elections in general done away with in "the old days" for this same reason?

The real reason the Electoral College was devised was at the request of the smaller states, which feared being ruled over by the large states. The United States Senate exists for the very same reason. The Constitution continues by delegating to the state legislatures the sole power to choose how their presidential electors are chosen. It was these legislatures, which surprisingly enough, are filled by popular elections, that chose that the voters would be able to directly choose their electors.

There never was a direct "popular vote" for president in this country, and the entire concept of the citizens voting for presidential electors did not come about until near the end of the 19th century. Additionally, even if the presidency was decided by the popular vote, Al Gore's margin of victory was a little more than three-tenths of 1 percent. Ironically enough, this is less than the margin required in Florida to trigger automatic machine recounts of ballots!