The Electoral College is one of those totally evil so-called *Great Compromises* in the Constitution --- along with slavery (blasted away in 1861-1865 at the cost of circa 620,000 dead folks and tens of thousands maimed for life) and the minority rule U.S.A. Senate --- extorted in the 1787 Federal Convention by the slave and/or small States.
The U.S.A. Senate derives from the *TOTAL* emergency faced by the First Continental Congress in May 1775 (just after the Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 Apr 1775-- beginning of the American Revolutionary War. The FCC decided as an emergency expedient that each State delegation would have one vote in the FCC since population estimates were a total guessing game back then. Such emergency measure then was carried into the 1777 Articles of Confederation (effective Mar. 1781) and then into the U.S.A. Senate in the 1787 U.S.A. Constitution -- i.e. a political- historical accident. The EC only hangs on because the popular vote losers (like Gore in 2000) have not totally blasted the *system* as being ANTI-democratic and totally corrupt. One of these years another minority rule President election (like in 1860) may well produce another Civil War. See also the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (about putting up with a whole lot of rotten political stuff).
