Thanks for the history everyone.
This is good argument to refute those who say that popular voting for president is what everyone else does.
In effect, voting for electors, based on your location, is what many countries do. [The biggest difference in the US, of course, is that in most states you are voting for a block of voters not just one, and with some states (e.g. California, Florida, NY, Texas) you are voting for a large block of those votes].
There is a difference between selecting a Prime Minister and cabinet, based on the composition of a Parliament, and electing a President.
For a single office, direct election by the whole population seems the simplest and fairest system. Any other method gives the possibility of the winner of an overall plurality of votes losing to another candidate whose smaller number of votes are more efficiently distributed.
