From the Guardian: The 100 best nonfiction books: No 81 - The Federalist Papers by ‘Publius’ - 1788 Excerpt - In the present public "debate", it seems that we have forgot the reasons why - subsequent to the defeat of the British monarchy - the states had some difficulty in agreeing to combine into one nation under a central government. It was particularly the southern-states who were preoccupied with their lack of population vis-a-vis the north. Which, ipso facto, gave them less political power in which to maneuver. The only way to appease them was to "manipulate" the popular-vote by means of the Electoral College, which lead to this historical fact: Five times in the history of the United States a democratic popular-vote was overturned by the Electoral College. This fact alone is a travesty of democratic rule! For true democracy to reign in our republic of states, we must "grow up" to the fact that ONLY THE POPULAR VOTE decides the presidency. Just like it decides elections to the Legislature and all public offices within the states ... NB: And the fact that it will be difficult to overturn the 12th Amendment to bring Truly Complete Democracy to America is simply a "given", and not a reason not to do so. We are simply correcting an historical mistake that is an obstacle to true democracy.
From Time Magazine (2016) : The Troubling Reason the Electoral College Exists Excerpt: This bit of history is unfortunate, but the Civil War and freeing the slaves (thus making them citizens and having the right to vote) did not change the unbalanced voting of the Electoral College, which looks like this: It's high-time we changed it ...