The Electoral College has been kept for centuries, established by the founding fathers and established in the Constitution.  I think that the process should be maintained; so far, it has worked fine and I do not see any reason to rid of it.  The Electoral College should be continued in use because there are at least five main scenarios in which it is helpful and reasonable.

In ways, the Electoral College could be dangerous to use unless you have electors that are completely faithful in their party, and do not take advantage of getting to choose where to place their vote.  Basically, voters are voting for a slate of electors, who then elect  the president.  These electors can go against the people's majority votes and decide who to vote for.  It could also be possible that a state sends two slates of electors to elect.  If the election was a direct vote, there would be almost no chance for a tie to happen, but with the Electoral College, there is always that possiblity.  Some states do not even see the candidates because of the majority of the people living there belong to a single party, and the "winner-takes-all" system completely affects this.  If the elcetion were to be a direct vote, the candidates might visit the states in order to gather as many votes as possible.  However, many of these reasons that the Electoral Collge should be abolished are just one time things, so consider the other side of the argument.

Swing states basically decide the election and therefore, they are the most thoughtful voters.  They know that they will be the ones to decide the election, so they pay more attention to the news, and the candidates' campaigns.  The swing states receive the most information and attention from the candidates.  Since they will end up deciding, the candidates want them on their side.  Many sates are already pedicted, even before the election, as a majority of them are from one party.  These voters think the most about who they want to run our country and who will do the best in that position, so they should be granted the honor of making the decision.

Electoral votes help avoid run-off elections, by reducing the pressure that might complicate the election.  Say that our government referred to the direct vote system, with a lesser system known as the Electoral College was for comparison, and during the presidential election, there happened to be a problem with the popular votes versus the Electoral College; this complication could be avoided if we used the Electoral College.  This has happened with nixon in 1968 and Clinton in 1992, when they both had only a 43 plurality of the popular votes but were winning in the Electoral College.

The Electoral College could be unwanted by many minority voters in states that leaned completely one way.  These voters hardly pay attention during the campaign because they know that their vote will hardly make a diffference in their state, but a voter's vote could not swing a complete election, and not the full population voted in the 2012 election.  Voters usually just like to express their preference and have it known than decide the vote that will make an election.  It is more likely that your vote will count if you are educated in the happenings of the government, and maybe your vote can make a difference.