the Electoral College was one of the several checks and balances our Republic’s Founders set up to prevent the (extremely dangerous) excessive democracy as well known to history (Greece in ancient days, the bloody French Revolution in times near those of our Constitutional Convention, etc.)
it is very very American, our Founders worked hard to design it well (along with a state-appointed US Senate, alas now gone, and a prohibition on the federal govt assessing or collecting any individual income taxes, also alas now gone)
we should have stayed with the Republic our Founders designed for us! As Ben Franklin said, they gave us “a republic, if you/we could keep it.”
well, we didn’t. and now we have the consequences of, in effect, the very sort of dictatorship they feared
They designated electors to each of the three political branches with the purpose of each institution in mind.1 As opposed to the House and Senate, whose members know their employers and thus whom they must satisfy, the Framers’ President was unbeholden to the people-at-large, states, Congress, faction, or collection of factions – what we know as political parties.
Our Framers discarded the ages-old methods of appointing chief executives. We cannot thank them enough! They devised a third body, neither popular nor aristocratic, a temporary electoral college to whom their choice, the President, owed nothing!
Thanks to a few electors, passing electors who did not hold federal office themselves, the Framers’ President didn’t owe his office to either the masses or elites.
He could do his duty to the Constitution and not to a political party.
I always laugh at these completely ignorant Democrats (but I repeat myself). The founders knew the central problem with ANY government was how to:
a. Have a government that derives its power from consent of the governed.
b. While at the same time limiting the excercise of power to only "just" powers.
c. Since the purpose of government is to protect unalienable rights, any power excercised to usurp those rights is, ipso facto, unjust.
This is the central problem discussed in the most famous Federalist Paper - #10 by Madison.
This is also the heart of the Lincoln - Douglass debate where Lincoln opposed Popular Sovereignty for this exact reason - The majority doesn't have the authority to permit slavery - the denial of the unalienable right to liberty. (Ironically, the more the Democrats change, the more they stay the same - Joey (neither of them) doesn't realize they use the same arguments for the same reasons as their slave holding predecessors.)
The Constitution has many provisions that affect this in addition to Electoral College:
1. The amendment process
2. Presidents CinC authority
3. Presidential appointments of the Judges
4. Judges lifetime appointments
5. Bicameral legislature
6. Appointment of Senators(done in by democrats)
7. Federalism itself (confirmed but ignored by the 10th amendment)
8. Limited federal powers (confirmed and ignored by 9th amendment)
There are others that developed after ratification
1. Filibuster
2. Gerrymandering