On November 4, the majority of eligible voters get to vote for president. The Election Day that truly matters, however, won't happen until December 15.

That is when those who make up the Electoral College cast their votes.  The electors whose political party carried their state (this also includes the District of Columbia) convene to cast their ballots for president and vice president.  Only two states, Nebraska and Maine, eschew a winner-take-all approach for a proportional allocation of votes.

The Electoral College's role has largely been ceremonial and bombshell-free.  Electors basically support the presidential candidates to whom they are pledged and thereby ratify their state's popular-vote decision.

Every so often, however, an elector will throw a surprise into the process.  That "faithless elector," despite being pledged to a particular candidate, goes his or her own way in voting for someone else instead.

Faithless electors have been viewed as unwelcome gadflies at best and latter-day Benedict Arnolds at worst.  And they leave a powerful impression.

Consider the case of William Plumer of New Hampshire, who served as an elector in 1820.  That was when President James Monroe, enjoying unparalleled popularity, ran for reelection without any serious opposition.  Monroe was on his way to becoming the only president besides George Washington to receive all the votes in the Electoral College.

Monroe missed accomplishing this by one vote because Plumer, who disliked the president and his policies, supported non-candidate John Quincy Adams instead.

Plumer's vote illustrates the faithless elector's restricted but potentially resonating role.  As the fly in that year's ointment of political expectations, he did not overturn the election results but he certainly sent a message.

Plumer's legacy can be seen in more recent faithless electors.

In 1972, one such elector contributed a historic "first." Roger MacBride, a Virginia elector pledged to President Richard Nixon, instead cast his vote for the Libertarian Party ticket.  That third-party's vice presidential candidate, Theodora "Tonie" Nathan, therefore became the first woman to receive a vote in the Electoral College.

Four years later, Mike Padden -- a Washington State elector pledged to Gerald Ford -- voted instead for the man who had challenged that president for the Republican nomination.  That also-ran was Ronald Reagan.

Padden said his vote was intended to signal strong discontent with the Democratic victor Jimmy Carter.  His vote foreshadowed the next presidential battle, when Reagan defeated Carter in an electoral landslide.

A faithless elector surfaced again in 1988, when many grew nervous about Dan Quayle being a heartbeat away from the presidency.  A few even urged the Electoral College to dump him in favor of someone else.

This didn't happen and that year's faithless elector came from the Democratic side.  She was Margaret Leach of West Virginia, who voted to reverse her party's ticket so that Bentsen was the presidential candidate and Michael Dukakis his running mate.

Last time around, and on the heels of one of our most hotly contested presidential races ever, another Democrat turned out to be something of a faithless elector.  Barbara Lett-Simmons of the District of Columbia opted not to vote for Al Gore and instead submitted a blank ballot.  She became the first elector since 1832 to fulfill her responsibilities in such a manner, explaining she did so to protest her hometown's limited congressional representation.

We can only wait and see if there will be any faithless electors this year.  In the meantime, I want to cast a vote on their behalf.  As long as we have the Electoral College, we might as well tolerate those in its vast dormitory who don't tow the party line.

Granted, some faithless electors - especially those between 1948 and 1968 who supported segregationist candidates - voted in ways we should never celebrate, let alone admire.  I would, however, defend anyone's vote to an independent vote.

One reason involves legalities.  Notwithstanding the punitive laws in many states, the Constitution itself does not prohibit electors from voting as free agents.

Beyond that, however, faithless electors deserve fairer consideration because they embody a time-honored prerogative that a lot of us talk about but rarely exercise ourselves.  Love them or hate them, they cast the ultimate protest votes in presidential politics.