The Electoral College by Dawn’s Early Light

'The Electoral College is both a steward and a guardian of our democracy', by Christopher DeMuth, review essay on Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? by Alexander Keyssar, and Let the People Pick the President, by Jesse Wegman, at the Claremont Review of Books.

"If, as seems highly likely (more on this anon), a national popular vote [NPV] would lead to a rise in third parties or to an outright multi-party system, the winner of the national vote would typically win a plurality, plausibly a small plurality in the 30% range.
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"...by the late 1970s, three prominent movers and shakers—Vernon Jordan, Benjamin Hooks, and Eddie Williams—joined most members of the Black Leadership Forum (a coalition of civil rights organizations) in full-throated opposition to NPV. The Electoral College, argued Jordan, was essential to preserving the two-party system, to discouraging splinter (including racial) parties, to balancing the interests of large and small states, and to protecting African Americans' strategic position and ability to forge coalitions with white voters and groups in the large industrial states. These arguments were apparently influential in drawing 'a sizable handful of liberals' away from NPV at its decisive Senate defeat in 1979. Only after the election of 2000, when positions hardened along partisan lines, did civil rights leaders coalesce with other Democratic Party constituencies in support of NPV."

See Constitution (U.S.), esp. Article II, section 1, and Twelfth Amendment, and The Federalist, esp. no. 68, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volume 43, (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volumen 40.