chads and all — effectively giving the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush lost the popular vote, but he won enough state elections to give him the most electoral votes.

It doesn’t take too many mental contortions to see how Tuesday’s election might produce a similar result, only this time with the Republican, Mitt Romney, getting the most popular votes and still losing the election.

You could also easily see how the battleground states could line themselves up just right to leave each candidate with 269 electoral votes — a constitutional perfect storm that would hit Washington with a force almost to rival hurricane Sandy.

The 12th Amendment anticipates such a thing. In a tie, the House elects the president, with each state getting one vote regardless of population. With Republicans expected to hold onto their majority there, that would elect Romney.

The Senate, however, would elect the vice president, with each senator receiving one vote. If that body remains Democratic, the nation could start the year with President Romney and Vice President Joe Biden.

Which would either end partisanship as we know it or make for some awkward White House events.

Even if such an electoral storm hits, however, it won’t shake my resolve that the Electoral College must remain.

Simply put, it keeps the emphasis on states and the issues that matter to them. In a far-flung and diverse nation, it keeps someone from getting elected by pandering to the interests of one populous region to the exclusion of others.

The 1888 election illustrates my point. Grover Cleveland based his campaign on opposing high tariffs and Civil War pensions. This made him extremely popular in the South, where he swept up such large majorities he actually won the national popular vote. Benjamin Harrison won the electoral vote, however, because he appealed to more states.

The Electoral College turns every presidential election into 50 separate elections for president. Politically diverse states, regardless of their size, attract the attention of candidates who are forced to look closely at issues of importance in those states.

States dominated by one party, such as Utah, don’t get such attention. They wouldn’t under a purely popular vote system, either.

If the goal is to elect the person who collects the most votes, popular elections don’t provide a perfect result, either. Bill Clinton never got 50 percent of the vote. Third- and fourth-party candidates easily could ensure that the winner represents a minority of the country.

If you require the winner to have at least 50 percent, plus one, the country would mire itself in runoff elections. In 2000, Ralph Nader would have been beating down Al Gore’s door, asking for a deal in exchange for his endorsement. Ross Perot would have done the same to George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole in the ‘90s.

Want to be like Europe? In a parliamentary system, people vote for political parties, who choose the prime minister.

The Electoral College is peculiar, but it is no less fair than any other system, and it is better than most. That will remain true no matter what happens Tuesday night.

one, I’m not part of it. Also, in a 30-year career that includes gigs at several newspapers and one news service in New York City, I’ve never seen evidence of competing news outlets conspiring with each other.

I can’t imagine what would make them do that.

But there has been some interesting reporting on Benghazi lately, mostly under the radar.

First, Fox News published this story a few days ago citing sources that say a CIA team near the consulate was told to “stand down” when requesting permission to offer aid during the attack on Sept. 11. A few of them ignored the order and came anyway.

When the attack turned on the CIA safe house, superiors again denied requests for military support, the story said.

The attack at the CIA annex continued for four hours. That was plenty of time for air support from a base 480 miles away to come.

Also, Fox reported that surveillance drones were sent to Benghazi soon after the attack began, capable of sending video back to Washington.

The CIA has denied that it wouldn’t provide support. Even if that were true, support was not provided in any way approaching what was necessary. The obvious question is how high up in the government were people aware of, and monitoring, the attack? Did the White House know what was going on?

More good reporting has come from the New York Times. This story, published two weeks ago, describes how Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the men believed to be a leader in the attack, sits in the open on the patio of a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe as he mocks the United States.

Obama has vowed to bring the people responsible for the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans to justice, but Khattala says it’s all just election-year politics.

This Times piece provides a measured look at the warnings that violence was imminent in Benghazi. It says Republicans won’t find the smoking gun they seek in the form of evidence that clear warnings were ignored. Instead, evidence shows the State Department had a security strategy “formulated in a very different environment a year earlier.”

The Benghazi angle that does seem to have been mostly ignored, however, is the Obama administration’s initial response to the attack, which was to blame an obscure anti-Muslim movie made by an American and published on YouTube.

This was mostly brushed aside in the second presidential debate, thanks to moderator Candy Crowley who helped everyone get hung up over whether the president blamed terrorism early on.

This is the sort of issue that has to be carried by pundits — columnists and editorial writers. Hard reporting may reveal some new facts about who knew what when, but the story about the administration’s initial response is fairly straightforward. Officials such as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney were publicly blaming the video for days after the attack.  The administration tried to pressure YouTube to remove the video, and the man who produced it was thrown in jail, ostensibly for violating the conditions of his parole for an unrelated crime.

The obvious angle for criticism here concerns the First Amendment. In the United States, we value the freedom to publish just about anything we wish, even if it offensive. There are good reasons for honoring that freedom and it ought to be one of the core principles we try to export to the rest of the world.

Instead, the administration used the video as a catalyst to arrest the filmmaker on unrelated charges that, frankly, were a stretch.

Taken together, all of these aspects to the story point to some key missing information. What really was going on in Benghazi that would prevent the military from a full response and prompt the administration to divert attention to an obscure video?

These sound like the sort of questions that ought to give real legs to a story.

learned any sort of lesson. Other than constant vigilance, there don’t seem to be many to learn.
   Modern life has become an obstacle course of fairy-tale proportions. We are Red Riding Hoods in danger of being eaten by someone we think is our grandmother. We are Hansel and Gretel hoping we have left enough bread crumbs on the ground to lead us back to safety. And we are modern-day Jacks who think we are too bright to sell all we have for a handful of magic beans, but who may end up doing so anyway because the bone-grinding giant can make his website look just like something we normally trust.
   With each lesson learned, the problems get harder. We have long-since learned not to trust the Nigerian who sends emails promising millions of dollars in return for a few thousand today, so the crooks instead try to grab us by looking exactly like our banks or by making phone calls supposedly on behalf of our favorite politician in need of cash.
   If you want a sneak peak into the future, it can be summed up in a single phrase: It’s not going to get easier. A recent story on Nasdaq.com told of how mobile wallet apps are the newest craze. Just pay for that stuff in your cart with your phone. Suddenly, “cashless society” sounds so last century. Welcome to the plastic-less society. And welcome to new opportunities for things to go very wrong.
   As far as my wife and can tell, we may have used a card reader that had been hacked, perhaps at a gas station. That’s not at all uncommon. Just ask Barnes & Noble customers. The company announced in recent days that devices customers used to swipe their cards in 63 separate stores from coast to coast have been tampered with.
   Company officials said someone planted bugs in the devices, allowing them to capture card and PIN numbers. They warned customers to check their accounts for unauthorized transactions, which could be as effective as checking the palm trees for coconuts after the hurricane has passed.
   Police are more sophisticated than ever when it comes to tracking down these crimes, but they have trouble staying ahead. As one Wisconsin detective recently told the Green Bay Press Gazette, “Technology is just advancing so fast. As soon as we stop one way of doing something, someone is thinking of another way.”
   We didn’t get here all at once, of course, which is why we continue down the road despite the dangers. The advantages of a cashless, or even plastic-less, existence are considered worth the risks. We have access to our accounts no matter where we are and no matter which personal device we use. We can get instant tickets to events without having to wait for a ticket window.
   As the Nasdaq report on mobile apps said, we no longer have to waste those precious 30 seconds while we swipe a card and wait for the slip of paper to print.
   But to a thief, every new convenience is an opportunity.
   In the old days, you would have to worry about the guy with the skills to reach in your pocket and yank out your billfold. With sleight of hand, he would give it immediately to a colleague who would pass it to another.
   Today, he is invisible and he flings your entire bank account thousands of miles in an instant.
   To protect yourself, all you have to do is hang on tight to something you can’t see.

So, what happens in the event of a tie?

Fortunately, the Constitution has a remedy. Unfortunately, it’s messy and not the least bit satisfying. I consider myself a fan of the Electoral College, but even I don’t like how this works out.

A tie might give us a President Mitt Romney and a Vice President Joe Biden. That either would signal the end of hyper-partisanship or, more likely, the start of the most dysfunctional White House in history.

This is the sort of plot that makes for a compelling movie or a best-selling book, but it’s no way to run the most powerful nation on earth, and the two candidates would probably just go at it again in 2016, prolonging the agony.

This CNN story outlines what happens in the event of a tie (or if there are three or more candidates and no one gets 50 percent of the Electoral College). You can pick up any copy of the Constitution and read the 12th Amendment to work it out on your own.

Simply put, the House would choose the president and the Senate would choose the vice presidential winner. But the House would do it on a one-state, one-vote basis. North Dakota’s vote would count the same as California’s.

The Senate, on the other hand, would conduct a simple vote of its members.

Mitt Romney would win in the House. Republicans currently hold majorities in 33 states and that isn't expected to change dramatically. But Democrats currently hold a majority in the Senate.

Before we get to that point, however, a lot of things would happen. The first is likely a collection of recounts in states where races were close, along with lawsuits, depending on just how close those results were.

Then the electors themselves would have to meet to actually cast their votes. Many states do not bind their electors, meaning they could turn rogue and vote for whomever they wish. As the CNN piece notes, the lobbying these electors would endure would be intense.

Even if you were chosen by the people of your state to elect a certain candidate, the temptation to go down forever in history books as the one person who swung the 2012 election might be too great.

The likely date at which the House would meet to select the president would be Jan. 7. Congressional members are sworn in before the presidential inauguration on Jan. 20. That means the current House, the lame-duck House, would by then have saved the nation from the fiscal cliff and gone away. The president and vice president would be chosen by the newly elected Congress, putting an added emphasis on House and Senate races this fall.

To be honest, the odds probably are against all this playing out. But it could, just maybe, happen. And, frankly, I hope it doesn’t.

It’s not just because kissing one’s sister can be uncomfortable. It’s because this could be the biggest challenge yet to confront the Constitution.

alludes, gave George W. Bush the White House in 2000 because he won the Electoral College, even though Al Gore got the most votes overall.

But I echo the “Ugh” to this outcome only because it would give the politically naïve more ammunition to change a system that works.

The truth is, there is no such thing as a perfect election system — one that guarantees the will of the people and protects the politically weak from being steamrolled by the politically powerful.

Stop laboring under that delusion and ask yourself this question: What is the goal of a presidential election?

Is it to empower the person who collects the most votes? In that case, a popular election won’t necessarily guarantee the will of the people any more than the Electoral College. Bill Clinton never got 50 percent of the popular vote. Third and fourth party candidates are likely to proliferate under a system that only counts votes.

The nation then would have to decide whether the election should be handed to whichever candidate receives the most votes, or whether the winner must have at least 50 percent plus one. If it’s the latter, you will end up with runoff elections and a coalition government.

For instance, in 2000, Ralph Nader would have been eliminated in a runoff, but he then could have demanded that Al gore accept some of his platform in exchange for his endorsement.

The same might have happened on the other side in the ‘90s with Ross Perot.

If you simply allow the person with the most votes to win, you end up with a leader who was elected by a minority of the people.

Does Europe have a better system? There, voters elect parties, and the winning party then sets up a government, often having to form coalitions with other parties when no clear winner emerges.

It’s merely a different form of unfairness, depending again on what you think ought to be the goal.

The Electoral College puts the focus squarely on the states. Each state holds its own popular vote for president, and candidates are forced to focus on issues that are important to those states. This is the best way to look after the unique needs of a far-flung and diverse nation.

Under no other system would Colorado attract the attention it has during this race. The same can be said for Nevada.

It’s also not a perfect system.

In recent decades, Americans seem to have segregated themselves by geography.  When it comes to presidential politics, the number of battleground states are precious and few, at least during an election as close as this one. Realclearpolitics.com lists 10 states as tossups, totaling 131 electoral votes.

Those states solidly in one camp or another have told the candidates how the majority of their people feel about the race.

However imperfect that may be, it is correct to put state needs front and center in presidential politics. That is far better than putting the emphasis on large urban centers, which is what would result from a purely popular vote system.

most egregious cases, reveals you as someone who engages in behavior shared widely by many otherwise decent people who often have to go a bit faster than posted limits just to keep up with traffic. Buying a prostitute, on the other hand, reveals you as someone with an ethic that says it’s OK to pay money with the expectation of being able to use someone else’s body for your own gratification.

So when I read about people in Kennebunk, Maine arguing that it isn’t really that big of a deal for someone to buy a prostitute, and that the names of these customers should be kept quiet, I get a little confused. (Read accounts of this here and here.)

That sounds exactly like something a man would say if he was caught with one of these working women and he didn’t want the embarrassment and loss of reputation that would come from being found out. Too bad. Buying a prostitute is a disgusting crime.

The Kennebunk case involves a Zumba instructor accused of prostitution, and her client list, which is the source of great speculation in a small town. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court is expected to rule soon on whether the list should be made public.

A lot of cities publicize the names of suspected johns as a deterrent. Shame can be a powerful weapon, they believe.

This isn’t a novel approach. A judge once ordered a gang member to send me a letter to the editor explaining how sorry he was for his crimes. I didn’t publish it because I wasn’t convinced of its sincerity.

Years ago a judge in Wilkesboro, N.C., ordered a woman who had killed someone in a drunken-driving accident to perform a monthly humiliation ritual. She had to parade around the courthouse for an hour at a time with a sign reading, "I am a convicted drunk driver, and as a result I took a life."

More than decade ago, a judge in St. George, Utah ordered a 22-year-old man to post a sign outside his house announcing he was a convicted drug dealer. This was added onto a sentence of 36 months probation. His parents were so embarrassed by the sign that they kicked him out of their house.

Shame has some effect. But in Kennebunk, lawyers for some of the Zumba prostitution clients are arguing for keeping the list secret. Some people worry  the real victims of this shaming technique will be wives and children, who will be ostracized, teased or otherwise mistreated.

Even those whose names are on the list could see their businesses suffer for committing what the community considers a minor infraction.

I will admit that the shaming technique in Kennebunk has some drawbacks. For one, the names on the list have not been convicted of anything. It is conceivable a name might be there in error. But on the other hand, rumors have spread around town about certain names believed to be on the list. If the names are kept secret, innocent people may remain under suspicion by their neighbors.

Perhaps most importantly, police in Kennebunk routinely publish names in cases such as this. They shouldn't make exceptions now because the case has gotten a lot of attention and some prominent names may be exposed.

It’s easy to dismiss the hubbub as another case of puritanical Americans being fixated with sex. No doubt, there is something to that.

But it’s also true that society seems to feels this is a bigger crime than speeding. Maybe the law is out of whack, and buying a prostitute should carry a bigger penalty.

NPower, 9/19/2011-9/9/2012),” the site says.

Thank you, PBS, for making the argument for cutting your network from the taxpayer umbilical cord.

The first lesson in running a successful media business is that audience attracts advertising, which in turn results in profits. Anyone who thinks PBS is commercial-free hasn’t watched much lately. And anyone who thinks Sesame Street, Antiques Roadshow or Downton Abbey can’t survive on its own doesn’t live in reality.

Sure, you can argue that a purely commercial network might not have produced such shows if the government hadn’t established public broadcasting in the 1960s. But establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which distributes money to a variety of programs and stations, has proven there is a market for such programs. Thank you, now it’s time for the government to get out of the way.

The ridiculous political maneuvering around Big Bird and Mitt Romney’s resolve to cut funding is based solely on the perception that most people like these programs and perceive that ending public funding also would end those programs. The premise is voters are too stupid to understand that the shows will continue.

People argue that funding for public broadcasting makes up a miniscule 0.014 percent of the national budget. We won’t solve the national debt by eliminating it.

However, that is not an argument for why taxes are necessary to fund it, or why the United States, of all places, needs government-funded news programs.

The other oft-heard argument is that PBS provides programming to rural and poor areas that otherwise would have no access to quality educational programming. It would be interesting to see the ratings such programs garner in those areas. Regardless, there is little reason to believe their access would be cut.

This entire controversy ignores the titanic shifts now taking place in the Information Age. Traditional delivery mechanisms are being challenged.

Yahoo and the ad agency Carat Interactive released a study this year showing that teens spend more time online than they do in front of the television or talking on the phone. Other studies have contradicted this view, but it’s hard to ignore all the alternatives out there, from Apple TV to Roku, that allow people to watch an impressive array of programs on-demand, including international shows, and for a fraction of the cost of cable.

In light of this, it seems silly to keep pumping $445 million of our taxes each year into public broadcasting.

regular book because of the aesthetic experience of holding and smelling (yes, smelling!) the paper.

The words are what makes a book good or bad, not the delivery method. And the act of casting a ballot is what lends a moral component to the civic duty of voting, not the day on which the ballot is cast.

That said, however, I find myself wandering to the side of the Election Day traditionalists this week as I hear reports of people already casting ballots in several states.

What on earth are they thinking?

Two debates remain between presidential candidates and one between the vice presidential candidates. But even if these voters’ minds are immovably made up on that race, there are countless debates remaining between candidates for state and congressional offices in these states, as well as arguments to be made for and against ballot issues and state constitutional amendments.

Those who cast ballots today are saying none of these things matter. They’ve made up their minds, thank you. If a candidate for their House district is found next week to have stuffed the dismembered remains of former lovers in the refrigerator, it would be too late for these folks. Their ballots are cast. Their minds are made up, based on … what? Incomplete information, at best.

So much can happen during the last few weeks of an election. The vast majority of voters have to struggle, at best, to understand the character and positions of candidates. Why not wait to get as much of that information as possible before getting in front of the touch screen?

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to allow early voting. Not everyone is available to stand in a long line on Election Day. The elderly or infirm should have a chance to vote easily by mail when it suits them best.

These are rational reasons. If we had the technology, it might be interesting to allow people to cast, and then change, their votes up to a certain deadline. This certainly would make debates more interesting, as TV networks show the tallies changing back and forth with each answer given.

But I still reject the argument, articulated recently in the Christian Science Monitor by advertising creative director Jim Sollisch, that there is somehow something more democratic about everyone having to come together on the same day.

He said, “I understand that it’s no less a vote if you do it from your kitchen table while you pay your monthly bills. It seems to me it’s just less a joy and more a chore.

We have so few opportunities these days to stand shoulder to shoulder with other citizens. We live so much of our lives online, where it’s easy to practice the First Amendment with the click of a button but difficult to participate in real discourse.”

To me, that’s an emotional reason.

We should allow early voting for convenience sake, and for the sake of making democracy more accessible. But for heaven’s sake make it for a more limited time period; and for the sake of democracy, wait as long as you possibly can before casting the ballot.

And while we ponder those and other questions, we can take some comfort in the fact that Burbank at least apologized and took responsibility promptly.

That can’t be said about every jurisdiction in which no-knock search warrants go bad.

Take this story out of New York state. Police from three agencies busted down the door of Fred Skinner’s house earlier this year and started handcuffing him. Skinner, like the Utah victim, is 76 years old. His health isn’t so good. He can’t hear too well and he recently had a stroke.

One of the officers noticed some mail on Skinner’s table and asked if the name on the address was his. Convinced of their mistake, they dashed out the door and into another house nearby.

This report in Reason magazine says police did not apologize for that incident until two local TV stations got involved. They have since paid to replace the front door.

If you read the 9WSYR.com report, you will see that Auburn Police Chief Gary Giannotta says he “only” remembers police raiding a wrong house four times in the last 16 years. Maybe once every four years is acceptable, but it’s certainly not comforting to law-abiding citizens who like to feel safe in their homes.

It might have been better PR for him not to bring up that statistic.

Not all botched no-knock warrants can be settled with an apology and a repair of damages. This story out of Lake County, Fla., is about an early morning raid of an apartment in which the occupant was found pointing a gun at deputies. They shot him dead.

However, the officers never identified themselves when they entered, and they had the wrong apartment. It isn’t unreasonable for a person who legally owns a firearm to try to use it in self-defense when he has reason to believe people are breaking into his home.

There are no solutions to this other than for police to be extremely careful about addresses when executing a no-knock warrant. In addition to caching bad guys, they need to instill confidence in the public they serve, not fear.

That said, they have difficult jobs. No-knock warrants are inherently dangerous. So, for that matter, are traditional warrants in which officers announce themselves. Members of the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force in Utah lost an officer and saw five others shot earlier this year when entering the correct home of someone they believed was cultivating marijuana plants. They had loudly announced themselves repeatedly before entering the home, according to an internal review.

It’s easy to forget these hazards in the face of elderly people who were needlessly terrorized. Chief Burbank’s public apology was the correct step toward making things right.