Electoral College - say what?!

Did you know that when you go vote tomorrow you aren't voting for the president?

What?! Who the fuck am I voting for?!
I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you about a little thing called the electoral college in four parts.



Part I: A description
The electoral college is a group of people who get together and vote on who will become the president and vice president. Each state gets a number of electors equal to the state's senators plus representatives (in total this number equals 538). Electors are not legally bound in the Constitution to vote for who the people vote for, but in practice pledge to remain "faithful" to the people. Whichever candidate gets a majority of electors (270) wins! If there is no majority, then the House of Representatives decides the President and the Senate decides the Vice President.

Part II: An Explanation (Q & A Style)
Why are the electors not bound to vote for who I tell them to vote for? I mean, can they just waltz into the electoral college meeting and vote for whoever they want?! That makes me really uncomfortable!
I understand. It makes me uncomfortable too! Luckily, there are a few safeguards. The electors are chosen by the parties (methods for choosing electors varies from state to state), so there is loyalty to the party and the candidates they pledge to vote for. Also no person holding office can be an elector according to Article II, section 1, clause 2, in hopes of keeping some amount of honesty in the whole process. Furthermore, 24 states have laws to punish two-timing, no good electors.
If that is not enough for you (and it isn't enough for me), there is also history - a faithless elector has never changed the outcome of an election and are generally caused by a death of a candidate (OMG, my candidate died, who do I vote for?! Oh it doesn't matter because my candidate is gonna lose anyways).
Ok, ok, so assuming this person votes how I want them to vote, why have these people anyways?!
The electoral college was established as a compromise (as so many things in our Constitution are). Delegates at the Constitutional Congress were debating whether Congress or the people should elect the President and decided that an electoral college would be a great compromise. The electoral college allows the people some amount of voice, but not too much (can't trust that unruly mob!). Originally, the electors were meant to vote more of their opinion than the people's choice. Also, the system was set up so that the electoral college only votes for President and then whoever comes in second is the vice president. But, that became a problem when John Adams (a Federalist) was President and Thomas Jefferson (a Democratic-Republican) was vice President!!! Oh noes!
It seems like this "Constitutional Congress" didn't know what it was doing. Like, at all.
It certainly sounds this way, but see times were different back then.

Part III: Historical Explanation
The Constitutional Congress really wanted the electoral college to just nominate candidates and then have the Congress decide. They did not predict the emergence of political parties and election campaigns, which changed everything. The electoral college was meant to be a gathering of elites to pick out nominees and not to reflect the popular opinion.

Part IV: If the system is broke, why don't we replace it?
I don't know. The system is broken, let me number the ways:
1. It was not set up to handle political parties, election campaigns, or people wanting their voice to be heard.
2. In all but two states (Maine and Nebraska) winner takes all, which means if a candidate wins 51% to 49%, the winning candidate gets all the electoral votes thus making 49% of that state's population silent in the electoral college. This also makes it look like one candidate won these huge swaths of the country when they did not and appearance is everything.
3. It doesn't make any sense and forces candidates to focus on "swing" states rather than a national majority or even all the states! Also, hello 2000 election with Gore winning a national majority but losing the election because of the electoral college (this also happened in 1876 and 1888).
4. A third party will never be able to win with this system, if that matters to you.
5. The system discourages voting in states that tend to go largely to one party or another because people feel that their vote doesn't matter (see #2) and they have point, it doesn't matter. This is also known as essentially disenfranchising almost half the population. But who cares about the slightly less than half that votes against the slightly more than half?! I do.

So, what do you think? Is it good, is it bad, should we change it? Other problems or even good points you see in the system?