something called a “fiscal cliff” — writing New Year’s resolutions may seem about as important as straightening paintings in a burning house.

And yet, people will be dancing in Times Square and at countless other parties Monday night, professing optimism for the new year.

This is not a sign of incurable stupidity. We don’t approach the future like subjects in some morbid experiment who insist on doing the same things over and over, hoping for a different result.

We are, speaking of humanity as a whole, creatures of incurable optimism. Good thing, that.

Every rearview mirror comes with a switch that allows you to view the same receding landscape without so much glare. The media, present company included, tends to ignore that switch. Only when confronted with faith, optimism and forgiveness in the face of tragedy, or joy at the start of a new year, do they confront a strange world where not everyone judges life in terms of headlines.

A trip to the past illustrates this perfectly. One hundred years ago today, the nation was emerging from a bitter presidential race. You think 2012 was contentious? In 1912, a charismatic former president, Theodore Roosevelt, rocked the Republican Party by defecting to run as a third party candidate. That paved the way for the election of a Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who remains a divisive figure a century later.

Progressives and conservatives were waged a bitter contest. Two constitutional amendments would take effect in 1913, dramatically altering the nation’s future. One legalized the federal income tax, allowing Congress to tax the rich. The other made senators elected by popular vote, rather than by their state legislatures.

On New Year’s Day in 1913, the Wall Street Journal published a report from Darwin P. Kingsley, president of the New York Life Insurance Co. Speaking of the recent election, he said the growth of socialism was the greatest threat to the nation.

Bitter labor strikes threatened to rend the nation. The end of 1912 saw the final sentences handed down in a case in which labor leaders had set explosives at various places around the country.

In the worst of these, bombs were detonated beneath the Los Angeles Times building, killing 21 and injuring 100 more. The Times had published editorials against labor organizers.

Any of these events easily match whatever happened in 2012.

And, by one view of the mirror, things quickly got worse. Before the decade was out, the world had been engulfed in war and an influenza pandemic had wiped out tens of millions of people worldwide.

And yet one of the most interesting stories of a century ago is a little blurb in the New York Times. It concerns a horrible accident at a holiday party in the Illinois home of a former U.S. vice president. A 12-year-old boy, perhaps mimicking the drill a young military academy student had just performed to impress the girls, discharged what he thought was an empty gun, killing a 15-year-old girl who was a party guest.

The young shooter’s name was Adlai Stevenson. He was, by reports at the time, inconsolable. Yet years later he was governor of Illinois and the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Twice he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate against Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Stevenson was known for his strong advocacy of peace and his frequent self-deprecation. Historians have speculated that the accident molded his character.

Regardless, he clearly chose to remove the glare and move ahead with optimism.

So did the nation as a whole.

Not many people today would enjoy having to live as if it were a century ago, no matter what we may think of the year just ending. We move forward with resolve, knowing we can indeed make things better.

Well, a small percentage of Maine is, in fact, black, and Webster later apologized for his remarks.

But that one never passed the smell test. If you were going to rig a presidential election, you would look for a more effective way than to send only dozens of conspicuous people into rural Maine to somehow cast ballots they weren’t registered to obtain.

Now on to the head-scratchers:

In 59 Philadelphia voting districts, Mitt Romney received zero votes, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The same happened in nine inner-city Cleveland districts, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Really?

It’s easy to believe President Obama would win those districts by an overwhelming majority, but totally and completely unanimous? Even in his rigged elections, Saddam Hussein never got 100 percent.

And Mitt Romney, it’s worth noting, only got 78 percent of the Mormon vote.

But, frankly, a rigged result like that would be too obvious, which argues against fraud.

Finally, Florida once again proved that, if it were an independent nation, it would make Haiti’s elections look good.

In St. Lucie County, 247,383 votes were counted. The only problem with that is that the number of registered voters there is 175,554.

This blogger called it a massive fraud. Officials, however, explained that the ballot was so long some voters submitted two voting cards. The actual turnout was said to be about 70 percent, which some conservatives think is still suspicious.

So what’s going on?

Look, no election, especially one involving more than 100 million voters, can be held without some strange problems. I’ve spoke with election clerks that tell of all kinds of odd things, mostly involving equipment problems and mostly in races where the outcome was not otherwise in doubt, so the problems didn’t come to light. I doubt any presidential election in U.S. history has been without these oddities, and there certainly have been instances of real fraud.

However, none of the above instances was of a scope large enough to change the outcome of the election. I’m also not sure they would have been changed by the requirement of a photo I.D.

That doesn’t mean states shouldn’t require I.D., as long as it makes them readily available to those voters who otherwise don’t have one. Any step toward making elections more secure is a good one.

Politics, after all, is a conduit to power, and power can tempt people to do some strange and desperate things.

But in reality it was said by the sister of Adlai E. Stevenson on the eve of the 1956 election. Polls showed her brother trailing Dwight D. Eisenhower as Election Day approached.

Those polls were correct.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog speculating as to when the next big polling meltdown might occur. A significant portion of the population is shifting from landline to cellular telephones, making it harder for pollsters to reach them. Some pollsters are beginning to track social media to get a handle on the pulse of popular opinion. The methods are starting to sound a little shaky.

But until the day comes when the aggregate of polls gets the big one wrong, we have to assume they are right. That’s because they have an impressive track record.

Even in 1980, when people seemed to be taken by surprise by Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory, polls had called it pretty much correctly.

A headline in the New York Times on Nov. 3, 1980 said, “Reagan and Carter stand nearly even in last polls.” However, the third paragraph said:

“But there was nothing in the national polls to indicate that Mr. Reagan was losing any of his apparently sizable lead in the state-by-state battle for the electoral votes that actually decide the election.”

True, as it turned out.

Realclearpolitics today shows 201 electoral votes in Obama’s camp and 191 in Romney’s, with 146 tossup votes. In a lot of those tossup states, including Ohio, the polling results are virtually tied when the margin of error is taken into account.

It’s a pretty sure bet the election is going to be close, but Obama appears to have a slight edge.

Or, you could look at the less scientific polls. This csmonitor.com piece notes that the Washington Redskins of the NFL have predicted nearly every election since 1940 by their performance the Sunday before Election Day. If the team wins, the incumbent wins. That has happened nine times out of nine. If the team loses, the party that didn’t control the White House has won eight out of nine times.

Carolina beat Washington 21-13 on Sunday. Good news for Mitt Romney.

But the University of Alabama won Saturday, and the “Alabama rule” suggests an Obama win.

Given the polls, you could probably examine coffee grounds and have a good chance of being right.

But getting back to Adlai Stevenson, it may be good to remember Garret “Jack” O’Brien. He was a bus tour guide in Manhattan who got his 15 minutes of fame in 1952 by claiming he took his own poll among the people who rode his bus.

O’Brien said he accurately picked Harry Truman that way in 1948 — an interesting feat considering some, including the Chicago Tribune, had gotten it wrong. His confident appraisal in November of 1952 was that Stevenson would win by a 2-to-1 margin.

Ouch. Even the candidate’s sister might not have fallen for that one.

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.

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.

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.