So why was the Elector College created?

[boston bean]

1) so small states votes could count more than any other?
2) because slave states were less populated than nothern states?
3) because a safety valve was needed in case a demagogue beholden to foreign interests won the election?
4) some other reason????

I always thought it was number 3... but many disagree.

We need to understand exactly the reason for the EC in order to understand why they are required to be a rubber stamp of an individual states popular vote winner. And then determine how to make it go the fuck away. No one persons vote should count more than any others.

[dumbcat]

1. I suggest you read

The Federalist Papers. (Then again, maybe they were just right-wing propaganda and hate speech of their time.)

[kennetha]

2. It was yet another compromise between the North and the South having to do with Slavery

One of the many keys to safeguarding slavery was the Electoral College. When it came to electing the president, various methods were considered. There was lots of momentum toward a popular vote. Indeed, one and only one barrier stood in the way of the direct popular election of the president. This is James Madison from his notes to the Constitutional Convention says about what stands in the way of direct popular election -- it was the fact that “the right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes.” His meaning was clear from the context. Southern states demanded electoral power proportional to their population—including their massive but disenfranchised slave populations. The North would have none of it, on the grounds that slavery should not be used as a ruse to increase the electoral power of the South. But a bargain was struck. The people would not elect the president directly. For if they did, the more “diffusive” suffrage of the North would guarantee northern domination of that office. Instead states would be accorded power to influence the choice of president in proportion to their populations. An enslaved person, however, would only count as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning that power. So were democracy and the popular will were sacrificed at the altar of the Union.