text: The outcome of the Electoral College vote is less likely to cause a dispute than the popular vote. The number of elctoral votes a candidate gets usually exceeds his popular vote. For example, "Obama recieved 61.7 percent of the electoral vote compared to only 51.3 percent on the popular votes cast for him and Romney."  Since most of the states have a "winner-take-all" system, its easier to determine which candidate gets the elctoral vote if there is a plurality in the state. A tie in the electoral vote is possible, but not very likely, even if the total is an even number. Voting based on the popular vote would just cause more problems than we would like to deal with.