It's true that part of the reason for the electoral college was to deal with issues of travel and communication. At a time when the only way to let Washington know what had happened was to send someone there with the news, a literal delegation had to be created to go there. However, there was another reason for the college which has been subverted. The idea, as Bill H says, was to level the playing field. It's not that "A state with a larger population and/or area was given more votes than one with less," as Bill puts it. This in fact happens naturally with a popular vote.

It's the opposite: a small state gets proportionally MORE electoral votes, not less. Vermont, for example, has only one congressman, but like all states it has two Senators. A state with a hundred congessmen also has two senators. So Vermont gets three electoral votes instead of one --the Senators increase their number of votes by 200 %! Meanwhile, the state with a hundred congressmen gets 102 votes--the senators only increase their number of votes by 2 %. Thus the smalll states get a slight advantage over the situation in a purely popular vote.

As you can imagine, these 100 votes nationwide (2 for each state) are rarely enough to make a difference in an election, though they theoretically could. The real problem is not the existence of the college, but the way the states have chosen to use their delegations.

To explain, there is nothing in the constitution giving the actual procedure of the college; only its bare existence is mandated. Most states have decided to have their delegations vote all-or-nothing, rather than proportionally. So, as people have pointed out above, even if 49 % of people in Alabama vote for gore, he gets zero electoral votes.

Curiously, this has had the opposite effect than the one intended by the creators of the college. Small states have even less power now. By winning only a handful of big states and ignoring all the smaller ones, you can become President.

I believe there is nothing wrong with the electoral college per se. What is screwy is the way its votes are counted. If 49 % of the people in a state vote for Bush, then he should get 49% of its electors, not zero. This creates its own problems (Vermont, for example, can only give 100 %, 66.6 %, 33.3% and zero--three votes, two votes, one vote, no vote) but the result would be more representative of the wishes of Americans.