text: The winner-take-all method of awarding electoral votes induces the candidates to focus their campaign effforts on the toss-up states. Voters in toss-up states are more likely to pay close attention to the competing candidates, knowing that they are going to decide the election. The Ellectoral College restores some of the weight in the political balance that large states (by population) lose by virtue of the mal-apportionment of the senate decreed in the Constistution.