For the uninitiated, the body in U.S. politics isn't an establishment of upper learning, or really any learning the least bit. The name ‘college’ draws on an older definition that essentially means a gathering of persons, usually of status, to elect a pacesetter of high dignity. for instance, you will hear of the school of Cardinals who gather together to elect the following Pope. A historical example are the Prince Electors of the Holy empire who formed an body to elect the subsequent Emperor (and to be more precise, they were actually electing the King of the Romans who would only become emperor once crowned by the Pope).
Best Laid Plans
Still, while these contemporary and ancient institutions is also interesting, for our purposes, the body within the us is meant by the Constitution to elect the president every four years. Workings of the school are described in Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution as modified by the Twelfth Amendment. Interestingly, the name “Electoral College” is rarely utilized in the Constitution, only the term Electors; and therefore the Electors never actually meet as a body; instead, they're gathered separately within each State.
The body was originally designed in order that voters would elect a neighborhood luminary, someone they might trust to represent their interests in electing a president. Electioneering was difficult before mass communications and travel. Therefore, the founders thought the common voter would be comfortable electing someone local they may trust rather than a random person running for president that they know little or no about.
However, two trends began to emerge. the primary was that political parties negated the necessity to grasp much about the candidates. Voters aligned with a celebration and whoever represented the party would be the simplest candidates for voters to settle on. While a number of the founders detested political parties, notably United States President, parties were probably an inevitable development. This substituted judgements of character with policy. However, the fact is that judging character is difficult to impossible, especially for an outsized diffuse electorate. whether or not confined to an body, elections supported policy preferences—and distilled through political parties—is much easier.
The second development was the belief by States that awarding their entire block of electors to one candidate would give the state more relative influence. So, states began to award all electors to whichever candidate won a plurality of the votes. this is often still the identical system the overwhelming majority of states use today.