Well if you really look at original historic spirit of the idea , they wanted you to elect the electors . You were supposed to vote directly for a person in your district that you ' d trust to vote for a real candidate . It wasn ' t supposed to be a winner take all system . Your district could vote one way , and the neighboring district could just vote for someone else . They even figured it would typically result in an outcome that didn ' t indicate a clear winner , and would just get deferred to congress . When states started gaming the system as an all or nothing general ticket to gain more influence over the election , it pissed off Hamilton and Madison , the guys largely responsible for the idea . You also have to keep in mind this is from an era when the nation was 13 states , before the emergence of structured us political parties , there was group of southern rural states trying to gain influence through a 35 th compromise to keep those same people in chains , the nearly unanimous support of a senate that would elected from the state legislature to temper the populist masses of the house , and without any modern forms of travel or communication .