No. of Recommendations: 2
The electoral college was a mistake, a bug, not a feature.
No, it wasn't.
The process for selecting the President was always intended to preserve the prerogatives of States as States, and not be a direct election by popular vote. At the time the new Constitution was drafted, States were very much viewed as sovereign governments - not political subdivisions of the national government. It's sort of a blend between a federation of countries (like the EU) and a Parliamentary system.
In the EU, the member states' representation in the European Parliament is not entirely proportional to population. It's a recognition that European Parliament is not governing a single unified governmental body, but is in fact a grouping of individual sovereigns that as sovereigns have interests that are different and distinct from a collection of individuals.
Similarly, in Parliamentary systems the head of state isn't chosen directly by the people at all - they are chosen by the MP's. Since it is possible, even common, for a party to have a majority of the MP's without a majority of the popular vote (witness recent UK elections), it's very ordinary for a Prime Minister to be selected by a party (and from a party) that did not garner a popular vote majority.
The Electoral College, like the Senate, was deliberately designed to protect the interests of the smaller sovereign governments from being "overpowered" by the larger populations in the larger states.
We've tried to convert the Presidential election from that hybrid Parliament/"EU-style" system into a direct national election. It doesn't fit entirely well to that purpose. That doesn't mean that this is a bug in the system - we're just trying to use it differently from what it was designed to do.
