That the Electoral College system is broken was apparent from the fiasco of the 2000 election, when the President was chosen with a minority of the popular vote. Although the same representational inequities may exist in Congress, there is never such a clear-cut and obvious flouting of the popular will as was seen in the election of the "President."
Although the fiction of the President being the "President of the States" works in theory, in real life, states aren't people and can't feel the connection to the President that the people feel. To the majority of the people of the U.S.A., their choice was flouted. That the choice of "the states" was honoured is small consolation. Democratic principles require that the President be the president of all the people of the country, elected by all the people on a one-person-one-vote basis, otherwise he or she will lack democratic validation. The validation of "the System" as opposed to the validation of "the people" is a pathetically inadequate substitute. As the quote from Alexander Hamilton, posted earlier in this thread, clearly shows, the real motivation for the Electoral College is the elitist notion that the people left to their own devices, are just too fucking dumb to elect a good President.
If the Electoral College system really worked as the Constitution intended, the Electors would be left on their own, without prior commitments, free to change their opinions at will, to vote for whomever the hell it pleased them to vote for, once elected.