To solve the problem that vexes Raspberry and a great many others, a Colorado voter initiative on next month's ballot would divide the state's nine electoral votes according to the share of the popular vote each candidate wins. That is only one of the proposed remedies that have been considered -- and one of the easiest to debunk. If the proportional system, as it is known, became the standard for all states, the most predictable effect would be to throw more presidential elections into the House of Representatives.

A study by Congressional Quarterly, quoted by professor Judith Best of the State University of New York at Cortland in the Spring 2004 issue of Political Science Quarterly, found that at least four of the elections since 1960 -- those in 1960, 1968, 1992 and 1996 -- would have gone to the House under that system. The 2000 election might have wound up there, too, depending on how fractional votes were rounded. The Constitution requires someone to win a majority of electoral votes; otherwise, the House chooses the president from among the top three finishers.

How do you think the public would react to the discovery that in such a contingent election, each state delegation has one vote, regardless of its size -- the Democratic majority from California being matched by the single Republican member from Delaware?

Because that idea seems so flawed, most of those who support electoral-college reform favor going all the way to direct national election of the president. A constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college and substitute direct election actually passed the House in 1969, only to fail in 1970 and again almost a decade later in the Senate.

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But direct election, however appealing, has plenty of problems built into it. When Congress debated it after George Wallace threatened electoral deadlock with his third-party candidacy in 1968, opposition came from small states, whose senators feared they would be overlooked by the candidates, and from urban constituencies, who feared diminution of their power to swing big blocs of electoral votes through the unit rule.

A bigger problem, Best and others argue, could be the effect on the two-party system. Most proposals for direct election specify a minimum percentage for victory -- usually 40 percent or 45 percent -- with a runoff between the top two contenders if no one reaches that threshold.

But as soon as you introduce the possibility of a runoff, you create an incentive for minor parties to form, in hopes of bargaining for favors or policy concessions from the runoff opponents. In such a system, a John McCain might have continued running after the primaries of 2000 to extract a promise from Bush to sign campaign-finance reform, or a Howard Dean this year in hopes of swaying John Kerry's policy on Iraq.

I suspect this whole electoral-college issue is due for serious debate in the next Congress. But prudence dictates a long, skeptical look at the seemingly easy solutions.