The Constitution of the United States is a document written to preserve co-equal sovereignty of a bunch of states that wanted to be closer to nations than provinces, while avoiding the then-very-apparent risk of centralized absolute governing authority.
The framers of the Constitution didn't get everything right, but it's very useful to keep that perspective in mind when trying to understand the form of the US government.
If you take the perspective of states as sovereign, with federation between them, then the Electoral College starts to make a lot more sense. The goal was to preserve the power of a state in the federal government, as much as to represent the collection of people from all states - both concepts were critical. The idea is that people from the nation deserve representation and that each state (and the people from that state as a sub-population) deserve representation.
If federation of states is a core concept of the subdivision of governing responsibility, then it makes sense to build a system that ensures each state has meaningful weight in the governance of that federation.
None of this is an argument for or against the Electoral College, nor should it be interpreted as arguing for the correctness/effectiveness/righteousness/morality of the institution. It is simply an attempt to share perspective to help understand why the system is the way it is.
As originally defined, the House of Representatives was the only piece of the federal government intended to directly represent the people of the nation. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures. The Senate was intended to represent the states, not the people directly.
The Electoral College was an intermediary to represent both the states and the people - as a compromise, it has many failings that seem obvious today. There is no federal mandate as to how a state's electors choose to cast their votes. Each state is responsible for regulating its own voting - this includes how people vote and how electors are chosen and how those electors vote. It is mere happenstance that the majority of states have a winner-takes-all allotment strategy for their electors. Maine and Nebraska notably assign their electors proportionally.
It is also interesting to note that the tie-breaking mechanism for an Electoral College tie devolves to the House, not with one vote per representative, but with one vote per state. This is another example of the concept that states are a concept deserving of representation.
The framers of the Constitution didn't get everything right, but it's very useful to keep that perspective in mind when trying to understand the form of the US government.
If you take the perspective of states as sovereign, with federation between them, then the Electoral College starts to make a lot more sense. The goal was to preserve the power of a state in the federal government, as much as to represent the collection of people from all states - both concepts were critical. The idea is that people from the nation deserve representation and that each state (and the people from that state as a sub-population) deserve representation.
If federation of states is a core concept of the subdivision of governing responsibility, then it makes sense to build a system that ensures each state has meaningful weight in the governance of that federation.
None of this is an argument for or against the Electoral College, nor should it be interpreted as arguing for the correctness/effectiveness/righteousness/morality of the institution. It is simply an attempt to share perspective to help understand why the system is the way it is.
As originally defined, the House of Representatives was the only piece of the federal government intended to directly represent the people of the nation. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures. The Senate was intended to represent the states, not the people directly.
The Electoral College was an intermediary to represent both the states and the people - as a compromise, it has many failings that seem obvious today. There is no federal mandate as to how a state's electors choose to cast their votes. Each state is responsible for regulating its own voting - this includes how people vote and how electors are chosen and how those electors vote. It is mere happenstance that the majority of states have a winner-takes-all allotment strategy for their electors. Maine and Nebraska notably assign their electors proportionally.
It is also interesting to note that the tie-breaking mechanism for an Electoral College tie devolves to the House, not with one vote per representative, but with one vote per state. This is another example of the concept that states are a concept deserving of representation.