What were the causes of the electoral college?

Answer 1

The electoral college was set up to provide a balance between population-based and state-based voting. Remember the United State was founded as a Union of States. Without a electoral system the elections would have and still would be easily decided by the most populous states. The electoral system was a compromise.

The above answer presupposes that a simple popular vote would be inadequate to elect the president. The above answer assumes that population-based voting would somehow result it unfair elections. REMEMBER, the number of electoral college representatives per state increases as a state's population increases. Thus, the most populous states often DO decide presidential elections. And there is nothing wrong with that. REMEMBER, the United States is a democratic republic.

The electoral college was not created as a compromise in the same way that Congress (population-based) and the Senate (state-based) were created by compromise to compliment each other. The very fact that members of the electoral college are not statutorily required to vote for the candidate that took their state is strong evidence that the electoral college exists to prevent the election of a populist president.

The electoral college was developed because the founders of the nation did not trust the people fully to directly elect their leaders. Some people (for example, Alexander Hamilton) did not have much faith in the common citizen. The overall opinion was that national leaders should be elected by educated, respected people who were selected by each state.

Answer 2

I just found the Answer to my question when I was reading the book The Importance of the Electoral College by Dr. George Grant.

It states in Chapter there page 9 the first paragraph that the first questioning of the need for the Electoral College was by Alexander Hamilton's writing in the Federalist Papers, about his fear that the elections might someday be corrupted. To prevent this, the Founding Fathers, established the need for an Electoral College.