There have been four "wrong winner" elections out of the nation's 55 presidential elections. This is a failure rate of 1 in 14. People who want to fly to Chicago wouldn't be very happy if their plane took them to Indianapolis once in 14 trips.

Also, half of American presidential elections are popular-vote landslides (i.e., a margin of greater than 10% between the first- and second-place candidates). Almost any counting system will produce the correct winner in a popular-vote landslide. Thus, among the non-landslide elections, the failure rate is actually 1 in 7.

We are currently in an era of non-landslide presidential elections (1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008). We should, therefore, not be surprised to have already had one "wrong winner" election in these six elections.

Moreover, a shift of a handful of votes in one or two states would have elected the second-place candidate in five of the last 12 presidential elections. In 1976, for example, Jimmy Carter led Gerald Ford by 1,682,970 votes nationwide; however, a shift of 3,687 votes in Hawaii and 5,559 votes in Ohio would have elected Ford. In 2004, President George W. Bush was ahead by about 3,500,000 popular votes nationwide on election night; however, the outcome of the election remained in doubt until Wednesday morning because it was not clear which candidate was going to win Ohio's 20 electoral votes. In the end, Bush received 118,785 more popular votes than Kerry in Ohio, thus winning all of the state's 20 electoral votes and ensuring his re-election. However, if 59,393 voters in Ohio had switched in 2004, Kerry would have become President. This would have nullified Bush's lead of 3,500,000 popular votes nationwide.