This letter is in response to M.D. Harmon’s Nov. 18 column, which incorrectly asserted that the Electoral College was created so that “a successful candidate would have to raise broad support over the entire nation.”

The Electoral College was created to induce smaller former colonies to join the new United States. If “one person, one vote” has been a mantra of recent politics, the Electoral College could be described as an attempt to enshrine “one state, one vote.”

The college is a clumsy institution that will remain in place not because of its effectiveness but because small states will never consent to give up their extra power. (I note with a smirk that Donald Trump has now withdrawn his 2012 criticism of the Electoral College as counter to principles of democracy.)

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln earned an Electoral College majority after he received less than 40 percent of the popular vote. He did not carry a single state in the South. He may well have been our greatest president, but six weeks after his inauguration, we were embroiled in a civil war that killed over 600,000 American soldiers. This is hardly evidence of “broad support over the entire nation.”

I will also note that, in regard to recent concern over rigged elections, in 1876 the House of Representatives openly voided 20 of Samuel Tilden’s electoral votes in exchange for Rutherford Hayes’ promise to end Reconstruction. Hayes then won the presidency by a single electoral vote, and the U.S. endured three generations of violence and legalized segregation in the South.

Whatever our Electoral College system does, it does not promote fairness, justice or national unity.

L. Paul Gilden

Blue Hill

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