Final answer:
The Electoral College was chosen to balance power between states and to provide a buffer against direct democracy, reflecting the founders' skepticism toward the masses determining the presidency outright. It allocates electors based on congressional representation and can result in a president elected without winning the popular vote.
Step-by-step explanation:
The nation's founders chose the Electoral College system over direct popular elections for president to maintain a balance of power between small and large states and to insulate the national government from the transient impulses of the public. With the Electoral College, each state is granted a specific number of electors equal to the number of its Senators and Representatives in Congress, ensuring that larger states have more influence but smaller states are not entirely overshadowed. The founders were divided on how to select a president; some favored direct popular vote, while others preferred congressional selection. The compromise was a system that provided a layer of separation between the general population and the final decision, addressing concerns about an ill-informed electorate and the potential for legislative overreach or corruption.
The Electoral College was created based on a distrust of direct democracy and as a mechanism to balance the interests of populous versus less populous regions, thus protecting the representative power of small states. Electors would vote for candidates, potentially acting as a safety valve against the popular will, while also serving as a nominating body given the expectation that many elections would be decided in the House of Representatives. This system has led to occasional discrepancies between the popular vote and the electoral vote, as seen in the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections, where the candidates who won the popular vote did not become president due to the Electoral College outcome.