This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Jenna Ashley Robinson, campus outreach coordinator for the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

This November, Americans will choose the 43rd President of the United States. And, although it’s far too early to come to any real conclusions, it’s possible that the Electoral College will once again come under fire from small-d democrats across the country. If the early head-to-head polls are any indicator, it’s possible that the general election will be close enough that either candidate could lose the national popular vote and yet become the next president by winning more electoral votes than his (or her) opponent.

So, why should we keep such an archaic institution?

The most common defense of the electoral system is one that relies on fairness. If we were to abolish the Electoral College, the argument goes, candidates would ignore smaller states and less populous areas of the country entirely, focusing all their energy on large cities and the populous coastal states.

Another advantage of the electoral system is its tendency to produce a clear winner, giving legitimacy and stability to a president’s time in office.

More historically minded defenders of the Electoral College are quick to remind us that the United States is a republic, not a democracy. James Madison’s Federalist No. 10 makes it clear that the founders chose the republican form of government for a reason: to insulate America from the vicissitudes of rapidly changing public opinion. In light of that, each branch of the federal government responds to a different constituency. The House of Representatives is elected by the populace. The President is elected by the Electoral College. Supreme Court justices are chosen by the President. And, until the progressive 17th Amendment was passed in 1913, members of the Senate were chosen by the states.

Of the three elections that determine the leaders of the country, two were designed to defer to state opinion over that of the populace at large. In order to preserve the separation of powers between the states and the federal government, the Electoral College must remain. It is the last electoral protection against nationalized power that remains in the Constitution.

The short-lived Confederate States of America provided for election of its president in virtually the same manner as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. And for good reason – our Constitution, as written in 1787, treated states as sovereign entities. It was for that sovereignty, originally recognized in the Constitution and by the 10th Amendment, that the Confederate states fought.

The United States, like the Confederate States, were always meant to be a federation. It’s not by accident that there’s very little direct democracy in the U.S. Constitution. The founders intentionally limited the direct influence of citizens on the federal government in deference to state sovereignty.

If we think of the word “state” as it was originally understood – as the political unit with the ultimate decision-making authority – then it becomes intuitive that each state should vote separately. There’s no reason for sovereign states to pool their voters for one larger national election.

As Kevin Gutzman makes clear in “The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution,” the founding fathers intentionally chose to organize the United States in a federation, where states were sovereign. Constitutional delegates, he writes, “rejected attempts by monarchists and nationalists in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 to create a national (rather than a federal) government.”

The states were the source of sovereignty, the seats of power, and the most important units in the federation. Each state controlled its internal affairs, as guaranteed by the 10th Amendment. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This obviously includes the means of choosing electors.

In order to preserve the most important tenet of federalism – the separation of powers between state and federal government – we must keep the Electoral College. Ending the use of the Electoral College would strip states of the last vestige of the sovereignty guaranteed by our Constitution.