Sometimes the electorate requires protection from itself; the idea is not new (below History Stack Exchange answer references James Madison).
"It is arguably the most famous of The Federalist Papers [1]. Madison argues that society is undone by faction"
defined as
"a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.…"
"A faction can be a minority, but also a majority, and the majority can work against the good of the whole by abusing its power. The majority simply cannot be trusted not to oppress the minority, given the opportunity."
Emphasis mine.
The "Tyranny Of The Majority" [2] also comes to mind.
"American founding father Alexander Hamilton writing to Jefferson from the Constitutional Convention argued the same fears regarding the use of pure direct democracy by the majority to elect a demagogue who, rather than work for the benefit of all citizens, set out to either harm those in the minority or work only for those of the upper echelon. The Electoral College mechanism present in the indirect United States presidential election system, and the phenomenon of faithless electors allowed for within it, was, in part, deliberately created as a safety measure not only to prevent such a scenario, but also to prevent the use of democracy to overthrow democracy for an authoritarian, dictatorial or other system of oppressive government.[3] As articulated by Hamilton, one reason the Electoral College was created was so "that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."
Some failure scenarios are clearly hard to prepare for.
http://history.stackexchange.com/a/5568