The presidential race is so close, and the swing states are so numerous, that this election campaign is haunted by the constitutional crisis of 1888.

That was the most recent time when a presidential nominee won a majority of the popular vote but lost in the state-by-state electoral vote. President Grover Cleveland led in the popular vote, but Benjamin Harrison won in the electoral vote and became president.

It could happen again this time. If it does, you can count on a surge of support for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College system and require direct popular election of the president.

On its face, direct election makes sense. Everyone’s vote would carry the same weight, whereas a Mainer’s vote now carries many times the weight of a voter in New York or Massachusetts or most other states.

And direct election would avoid the present long-shot possibility of an electoral vote tie, which would throw the election into the House of Representatives. That would be bad enough, but what if the vote in the House was a tie? No one seems to have figured how to deal with that one.

These arguments are powerful but not compelling, says Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. In a 1997 congressional hearing on the matter, he asked what Bill Clinton (twice), John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Woodrow Wilson, Abraham Lincoln and eight other American Presidents had in common. The answer was that each of them received less than a majority of the votes cast in the election that put him in the White House.

The nation survived, despite the fact that so many Presidents fell short of a majority of the votes cast, and despite the fact that no President, at least since 1824, has received a mandate of a majority of the eligible voters.

Now for the case against direct election:

. Manipulation of the voters, through polling and targeted television messages, would further take over the election on a wholesale national basis.

. Grass-roots political organizing would evaporate. There would be little incentive to mobilize the elderly in Florida or the African-Americans in New York of the South or the Christian Right in West Virginia. Without such politicking, voter turnout would drop further and democratic government would wither.

. Direct election would erode federalism by cutting back the power and influence of state leaders and party organizations. Under the electoral system, they play important roles as they concern themselves with state and local issues. The states serve as laboratories for policy solutions for such issues as welfare reform and crime control.

Rather than switch to direct election, it would be better if the other 48 states would copy Maine and Nebraska and choose two electors statewide and the rest by congressional district.