> My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning

The college was a compromise to give a larger voting share to slave owning states that had a high overall population, despite having a relatively smaller number of possible voters.

Pretty sure that was the 3/5ths compromise, not the electoral college.

They worked hand in hand. In other words, given the 3/5s compromise, how to you implement it from a voting perspective? For example, if your state has a population that was 50/50 slave/non-slave, then each non-slave vote was theoretically worth 1 and 3/5s of a vote, but giving individual voters differing weights was deemed unacceptable. The solution was the electoral college in which the votes available to the state could reflect the extra voting power of the non-voting population.

I don't think the electoral college was intended to work the way it does today. If I'm remembering correctly, it was originally a "Frank from town is really smart and well-informed, so I'll send him to DC to choose the president" type of institution. (This is also part of why there was such a long gap between election day and inauguration - the electors still had to get together in DC)

So while the electoral college might have also functioned as a way to redistribute votes within a state... I don't think that was its main purpose.

If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector#List_of_fait...

As with so much in American history the explanation involves slavery but judging from the downvotes here, that wounds everyone's pride a bit.

> If this were the case you'd expect to see a lot more faithless electors in our history than we have seen.

...other than the large numbers in the late 1700s and early 1800s, you mean?

And in any case, "intent" and "actual practice" were pretty different here. But that doesn't mean that the Connecticut Compromise [0] (which split the US legislative body into the House with representation apportioned by population and the Senate with set representation per state) was solely or even primarily due to slavery. And once you had that, using the total of Senators and Representatives for your number of electors makes a good amount of sense.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise

The 3/5 compromise was to reduce the power of slave owning states as they wanted slaves to count fully for determining the states’ representation in the house so they could maintain more control of the house.

The compromise reduced the control the slave states had.

It was indeed intended to prevent populism; the idea is that instead of voting for the president you vote for a group of people who you trust to then choose a president. But it has never in practice worked that way.

And in fact many states electors are not legally allowed to do that any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector

The question of whether faithless electors are allowed to be... faithless (ahem) is currently working itself through the courts, which is remarkable:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/22/he-tried-st...

Interesting, though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for. And really calls into question the whole electoral system if the electors cannot be constrained by their states at all. Just bribe or threaten 271 people and the whole presidency is yours really since states can't invalidate faithless votes...

> though this sounds like it would really hamper the idea of the national popular vote compact which I'm personally pulling for.

I'm a supporter of NPV. I don't think it's likely to be a problem, although this feels like something that will shake out a lot further in the federal courts.

> My recollection from civics was that the college is to prevent populist candidates from winning.

Well, that didn't work.

Probably something taught by a not conservative teacher/professor.

As I recall, the electoral college was primarily for logistical reasons— a number of people come to Washington, meet together, and the outcome of that meeting determines the next President, with no appeals because the people in the room are empowered to choose.

Communication happened at the speed of a horse, so if you need a decision quickly, you can’t have electors asking for instructions from their home government. For better or worse, the founders favored a definitive result in this case over a correct one.

I thought it was to help make sure presidents are elected by hmm not elected by poor bellow average educated people. Back then

That assumes that "only appeals to cities" is the only type of populist that we need protection from. The electoral college does nothing to protect against things like "only appeals to white people" or "only appeals to Christians" populists, which were not a big concern for America's founders or the much whiter and more Christian rural population today.

Huh? Somehow I doubt the rural population is less white or Christian back in those days.

English and its ambiguous grammar... I mean when the founding fathers designed the electoral college, they wouldn't have been concerned about it taking power away from minority groups. In addition, the people in rural areas today who are so concerned about removing the electoral college giving more power to cities are not concerned about how the electoral college disenfranchises minorities because they are much less likely to be minorities or have many close friends who are than people in cities and suburbs so it's not something they'd normally think about.