LogFAQs > #924083416

Actually, it was intended more as a means of "nominating" candidates that congress would then select from to decide the next President. They didn't expect the electoral college itself to determine the Presidency hardly ever (delegate George Mason is quoted as having said that the electoral college deciding the President was "not likely to happen twice in the same century"). They expected there to be multiple people vying for the Presidency, and gaining a clear majority of the EC votes was intended to be rare.

The EC was essentially a middle-ground. They didn't trust the general population to decide the President because frankly most of the population was extremely uneducated, and the fact that there was no real rapid communication across the country meant most of them wouldn't even know all the candidates who were running let alone their actual stances on issues. They also didn't want congress deciding it on their own because they were afraid it would be too easy for corruption and foreign meddling to run rampant.

The compromise was to have the electoral college "nominate" the top candidates from the general election, and then have congress decide among those top picks.

Well with advances in technology, the lack of education and inability to spread news across the country is no longer an issue. And we've already seen how it didn't prevent foreign meddling anymore due to those same technological advances. To be frank, the EC is out-dated, no longer useful, and at times downright harmful to our elections.