As we are mired in one chaotic presidential election, we're reminded of something that's even more messed up: the Electoral College.

Let's dismiss the situation in 2000, when Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush but lost the Electoral College and therefore the election. Did you know that members of the EC don't even have to cast the vote they are supposed to?

As the guideline goes, the votes delegated by the state should be pledged by the EC to the candidate who won that state. But people in the EC are just that, people. On numerous occasions, they have turned into so-called faithless electors.

Take 1972, when elector Roger MacBride was pledged to give his vote to the Nixon/Agnew campaign, bud decided to give it to the Libertarian ticket of John Hospers and Tonie Nathan. Now, this was equal to throwing the vote away, since a faithless elector is the only way the Libretarians would ever receive one. (As a side effect, it made Nathan the first woman and the first Jew to receive an electoral vote in the presidential election. So that's something.)

To make it even more messed up, four years later, running on the Libertarian presidential ticket was... MacBride.

Now, faithless electors have not yet affected the choice for presidency. But considering how messed up this cycle has been, we wouldn't put that against them...