The vital aspect of the electoral college was that it got the Convention over the hurdle and protected everybody's interest. The future was left to cope with the problem of what to do with this Rube Goldberg mechanism... The Electoral College was neither an exercise in applied Platonism nor an experiment in indirect government based on elitist distrust of the masses. It was merely a jerry-rigged improvisation which has subsequently been endowed with a high theoretical content.
~ John Roche
