Originally Posted by Senator Hatrack
You are taking my reply to logtroll about the Electoral College out of context. As James Madison said "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." That is why I said the purpose of the Electoral College is not to produce superior leaders. The purpose of the Electoral College is, as your links state and I wholeheartedly agree, to balance the power of small states against the power of the big states.
If that was in reply to me, my friend, it is in error. As Hamilton (or Madison, no one is entirely sure) stated, in Federalist 68, "It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture." Note, not a selection by States on behalf of States, but from the people, and "that the Executive should be independent for his continuance in office on all but the people themselves."

It was Hamilton's (or Madison's) hope that "The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications." I think we all agree it failed to do that in this instance, which was, I think, logtroll's point. Moreover, if the only think you discerned from my link was that the EC was "to balance the power of small states against the power of the big states", then you have missed, entirely, the import of those citations. In short, you are decidedly wrong.