This is what I was told a long time ago..
The electoral college gives more weight to states that are "higher educated" and less weight to states that are "less educated". You'll notice that the states with the highest electoral votes are the ones with big, high-tech, industrial cities and the ones with less votes are those states that are mostly agricultural (farm land). They didn't want the "lesser educated" states to have the same voting power as the "higher educated" states...
And I think it should have been abolished a long time ago... along with daylight savings time.