scotzoidman,

I did some checking, and it turns out that when the Electoral College received its current form in the 12th Amendment, the idea of electing the president by direct popular vote was not widely promoted as an alternative to redesigning the Electoral College. This may be because the excesses of the recent French revolution (and its fairly rapid degeneration into dictatorship) had given the populists some pause to reflect on the wisdom of too direct a democracy.

The Electoral College system imposes two requirements on candidates for the presidency:

1. that the victor obtain a sufficient popular vote to enable the winner to govern (although this may not be the absolute majority), and
2. that such a popular vote be sufficiently distributed across the country to enable the winner to govern.

Such an arrangement ensures a regional balance of support which is a vital consideration in governing a large and diverse nation. At the same time I also discovered that the Electors are not bound to vote for the candidate to whom they had been pledged! I have this vision that following a large infusion of money, following the election – Al Sharpton emerges as the President Elect!

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Eudaimonia