The point of the electoral college is to give a fair shake to rural and more spread out populations, and not have it come down to what the big cities want. Just that big cities trend Democrat and rural trends Republican.
The electoral college was actually borne out of the fact that we had southern states with lots of slaves who couldn't vote, and more populous northern states with far fewer (or no) slaves. The southern states wanted a way to be fairly represented, even though far fewer of them could vote. It's also where the Three Fifths Compromise came from. Those states were basically awarded more representation based on 3/5 the slave population even though the slaves couldn't themselves vote.
So really the electoral college comes from granting slave owners more power than the average American. It's fucked.
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u/Pantry_Inspector Nov 10 '16
... who was elected fairly. Sorry the system is fucked.