This article appears in a Uganda newspaper dated July 13. The author happened to meet Daniel Imperato, who apparently still holds himself out as a candidate for president. The chance meeting intrigued the author, who then went on to learn about the other presidential candidates in the November election.

The Wall Street Journal of July 12 has this op-ed, attacking the National Popular Vote Plan and defending the Electoral College as it is today. The op-ed is by Political Science Professor David Lewis Schaefer, who teaches at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The op-ed makes several assertions that are not supported by the evidence. It says a system in which the voters elect the president directly “would encourage more minor-party candidates” and says this would be a bad thing because someone could win with a small share of the vote. Actually, if the goal is to have a system in which no one is elected without having a majority of the vote, one should favor the system used by France. In France, the voters elect the president directly, but there is a run-off if no one gets 50% in the first round. The run-off is held only three weeks after the first round.

It is the current system in which someone may get elected with a relatively small share of the vote. The current system produced Abraham Lincoln in 1860, even though he only had 39.8% of the popular vote. It also produced John Quincy Adams in 1824 with 31.9%, Woodrow Wilson in 1912 with 41.8%, Richard Nixon in 1968 with 43.4%, and Bill Clinton in 1992 with 43.0%.

The op-ed also says, “In a two-party race, you can’t win an election without demonstrating your acceptability to a large swath of the public”, but there has been no presidential election with just two candidates, or just two parties, since 1864.

The op-ed also reveals an ignorance about minor parties when it refers to “Ross Perot’s 1992 Reform Party.” The Reform Party was not founded until 1995; Perot was an independent candidate in 1992.