This article misses an important reason for the electoral college in the first place. The founding fathers designed this electoral system as a three-tier electoral system.
- The citizens would elect their state legislators.
- The state legislators would then elect, from amongst themselves, the electors to travel to the capital to elect the president.
- The electors would then elect the president, probably after a convention of a week or so.
The belief was the the state legislators (and then the electors) would be in a better position to know who is more suitable for the office of the president than the voting public.
Somehow the constitution got morphed such that, legally speaking, Americans are still voting in an indirect way. But for all practical purposes, Americans are voting directly, which is something the FF did not want to happen.
As someone who has followed this electoral college debate (which I regard as a smokescreen for what really ails American politics) for some time, I have yet to hear anyone making the claim that the EC minimizes the chances for a more tyrannical rule.
The EC is in place because that was what was needed to get the smaller states to sign into the US constitution. Had that not happened, history would be much different.
