Why do we have an electoral college, and what happens if we have a tie?

Here's an explanation by a colleague of mine:

"The rationale for having an indirect election of the president (i.e.through the vote of electors who meet as a college to cast theirballots) is related to the constitutional importance of tipping the balance in favor of the small states. Without the provision of anindirect election, a candidate could literally spend all of his/her timein just a few very populous places and ignore those places that are notso. Thus, the political game would no longer who can win Pennsylvania, Florida, etc... but who could win New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, etc... Candidates would have no reason to spend any time whatsoever inrural Kansas, Maine or Nebraska.

What gets interesting, though, is that a tie will trigger a vote by theHouse of Representatives, in which each delegation will meet and cast ONE VOTE. Thus, the balance is tipped even further in favor of thesmall states as Wyoming suddenly has the same number of votes (one) asCalifornia (instead of 3 to 50-something).

Add to that, too, that Wyoming's one vote would be the consensus reachedby, you guessed it, one at-large house member... while that from California would be that reached by 50-something. Thus, it becomes possible that not just one state, but one individualperson could affect the balance of the election.

For those of you who haven't read it, I'd recommend Jeff Greenfield's The People's Choice -- a short novel about how this could happen (thoughunder slightly different circumstances).