with regard to 'populist fervor' and 'consideration of abnormality by the electors':

others (self included) feel that the anti-democratic nature of our system (particularly the court, the senate and the E.C.) **is the problem**, not the solution to the near-complete capture of government by a minority-representative far-right.

"The Scandal of Democracy: Seven Theses"
(link...)

The Electoral College election of our President is very undemocratic. The Constitutional Convention was held in 1787. At that time few people in our country were literate. We did not have internet, radio or TV or any real way to communicate information to the masses. Transportation was not easy without planes or cars or trains. There was no audio or video of politicians to hold them accountable. The thinking of most of the 55 delegates at the convention was that most Americans were too ignorant and uninformed to make the decision of selecting our President so therefore the Electoral College could at least put a check on that ignorance. Today most Americans are literate. We have internet, TV, radio, and all kinds of ways to inform the masses. With all that information and facts available we still had almost 63 million misguided citizens that ignored the facts and voted for a totally unqualified and immoral man for President that knows nothing about the world and how to run our country. No system is perfect, but it really contradicts the democratic ideals of our democracy to have a President that was not elected by popular vote! The Electoral College should be abolished in favor of popular vote only. Our country would be much better today if the popular vote had decided the 2000 and 2016 elections. We will never be able to recover from the mistake of the Electoral College in 2016.

Most of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention knew how important it was to come up with a strong governing document for our country after the failure of the weak Articles of Confederation. After several years of economic and political chaos under the Articles they knew our country was fragile and would not be successful with states acting as separate countries under a weak central government. They did not want the second attempt at government to fail. They knew that creating a lasting document that would be accepted and ratified would require compromise. James Madison knew small states would never agree to a system where all representation was determined by population. Small states would never be able to make a big influence on laws if the large states dominated the makeup of the legislative body. He knew that large states would never agree to a system where all states, no matter their population, had the same representation. Madison came up with the Great Compromise where there would be two houses of Congress. To please the large states, The House of Representatives was created. The number of members per state would be determined by population. To make small states happy, the Senate was created. Each state would get 2 senators no matter the population. Several other compromises such as the three-fifths were included to get the support of slave states.The compromising worked. We got a document that created a new government in 1789, and has held up for 230 years. Many of the 55 delegates at the convention like Madison, were brilliant. They created a document that could be amended as society changed, but made it difficult to change so it could not be easily shredded. Over 11,000 amendments have been proposed, but only 27 ratified. They also made a document that was vague, giving lots of room for interpretation as society changed. There is a good chance that without these compromises and foresight that what is now the United States could have ended up like Europe, being split into dozens of smaller countries. All that being said, given all the smart folks at the constitutional convention there were no women included. No delegate was black or native American. They were 55 white men. Many of these men were racists and sexists. After 230 years why should everything we do as a country be determined by 55 white men that lived in a world totally different from what we have today? We need to abolish the Electoral College. We need to amend or abolish the second amendment that was created a few years after many places in the country were occupied by British soldiers. A time when most citizens hunted and at least supplemented their diet by eating the animals they killed. A time when guns were needed to survive. Our country has had dramatic changes. We do not need to outlaw guns, but we do need to regulate who owns guns and how they are used and create sensible controls. Today is very different than 1787 when the constitution was written. We need to make changes in our government accordingly.

I have to agree with Jesse here. The EC was simply one more try at putting lipstick on the pig of unequally sized or populated states combining to form an incredibly unperfect union.

We elect literally every other office in the U.S. by popular vote, so if there's a problem with popular votes we should also be re-examining how we elect governors, senators, mayors, dog catchers, etc.

This is a huge truth. The safeguard in the system is supposed to be the judiciary. Ideally, we would transition to a system where the judges are never elected but are subject to periodic review with the potential for criminal consequences.

The EC is a piece of shit and makes a mockery of the judiciary being a co-equal branch of government as they currently depend on and are indebted to the executive. I honestly do not understand how or why any allegedly thinking person would even try to defend it.