There are people, and some of our founding fathers were among them, who consider the average person untrustworthy.
If you allowed "the mob" to rule, they would be both unpredictable and probably attack the privileged property owners.
The constitution as originally written included a number of protections, certain restriction on who could vote (most of those have been eliminated) the Senate and the Electoral college.
The Senate was originally envisioned as respected property owners selected by each State's legislators to provide a check on the House, elected by the populace.
In addition they came up with the Electoral College, an indirect way to select the President, hoping to prevent a demagogue from swaying the masses and taking over.
Senators are now still apportioned evenly, 2 to State, but in those States they are elected via popular vote. They therefore still represent a check on the Government protecting the interests of smaller states.
The Electoral college is still in existence and because of that we have now in a number of cases had a President who did not receive the most popular votes.
Is this desirable? Well it doesn't represent the will of the people but it does allow a well organized minority party to manipulate the system (legally) and win an office they couldn't win in a popular election.
It has now become a political issue which is opposed by a majority of Americans.
Naturally we are seeing all sort of self interested arguments effectively repeating the insulting mantra that the "mob" cannot be trusted.
The Oligarchs making that argument are much more untrustworthy than the average person, they have been manipulating the system since the nation was founded.
May we should opt for real democracy?
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