Question

Why did the founding fathers create an electoral college?

Answer 1

Two reasons:

1. To protect against a tyrant being elected by simply a popular (majority) vote.

2. To better spread the power to choose the nation's leader among the smaller states. Each state gets one electoral vote per representative in the US House of Representatives. So California, a densely populated state, has 54 votes, whereas North Dakota, with its small population, only has 3 electoral votes.

In a sense, this gives smaller states a greater advantage over larger states because votes in smaller states actually count more. So if 10 million people vote in California, that means that each electoral vote represents about 185,000 individual votes. But if only 200,000 people vote in North Dakota, each electoral vote represents roughly 67,000 individual votes. So an individual's vote matters more in smaller states.