By the way, it worked

LITTLE ROCK — Not that it’s likely to end the quadrennial criticisms of the Electoral College, that ticking 18th Century mechanism by which the United States still elects a president, but it might behoove the usual critics to note that sometimes-indeed, most times, like this year-it works so well that few if any Americans may even notice.

Within hours after the polls had closed across this rambunctious, variegated, litigious and still unabashedly free nation, the country had a president whose election was beyond doubt. The popular vote may have been close-64,817,072 or 50.8 percent to 60,449,355 or 47.4 percent, according to the last unofficial count we heard. But the electoral vote wasn’t close at all: 332 to 206. Which left no room for the kind of seemingly endless lawyering that marred the presidential election of 2000.

This year the result was not only decisive but swift, which is just what the Electoral College is designed to deliver. It transforms a close popular vote into an unassailable electoral margin because just about every state chooses to cast all its electoral votes for the candidate who carries that state.

This winner-take-all feature, much criticized by those who keep coming up with theoretical alternatives, worked beautifully this year. None of the proposed alternatives to the Electoral College have ever worked as well because they’ve never been tried, and for good reason. Long experience, whatever problems it may include, should trump merely theoretical systems.