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Originally Posted by larrymcg421
If the argument is about how the founders intended elections to work, well the electors weren't bound back then, so why should they be now?
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I think it was something that was overlooked in the 12th Amendment. Prior to that, the President was the one who received the most electoral votes, and the Vice President was the one who received the second most. The original Constitution was written before political parties really existed in the US. The 12th Amendment came about when Jefferson and Burr both ended up with the exact same number of electoral votes, and there was also a deadlock in the House of Representatives. It took some dealmaking for them to finally choose Jefferson as President. After that, they decided to make Electors for both President and Vice-President, and put in the proviso that in case no one got a plurality of votes, the top 2 were sent to Congress to be decided on.
So the process has changed since the founding fathers originally wrote the Constitution. It's not true that the way it currently works is the way that it has always worked, although the current method has been in place a long time.