In my opinion you misunderstand the Founding Fathers’ collaborative beliefs documented in the U.S. Constitution.
“Therefore, the government could theoretically take away citizens’ rights (and many believe that it already does, on a range of issues) and be only partially accountable, because of the way that the electoral college is designed to limit democracy.”
The sole purpose of the electoral college is to elect the POTUS and Vice-POTUS. Each state has the right to determine how its representatives in the electoral college are selected and how their electoral votes authorized by the U.S. Constitution are allocated. Maine and Nebraska distribute their electoral votes — statewide winner receives 2 electoral votes while each congressional district winner receives 1 electoral vote. For all the other states the statewide winner receives all of the electoral votes.
The national government in the U.S. is a constitutional republic that implements a representative democracy. The Constitution specifies and limits the authority of the national government and the state governments to protect the unalienable (God given) rights of the people. The Founding Fathers understood that a direct democracy becomes unmanageable when there is a large number of participants. While today’s technology makes it possible for each citizen to participate in the government process most have neither the time, inclination or education. Even Congress was apparently overwhelmed with its responsibility to be the sole legislative body and unconstitutionally has delegated that function to numerous agencies in the executive branch. The Founding Fathers also understood that without documented limitations for a democracy the ruling majority could result in tyranny of the minority.
The Founding Fathers established in the Constitution a balance of power between the national government, the state governments and the rights of the people. There were also checks and balances within the national government to prevent usurpation of power by any one of the three branches. Unfortunately, there has been an ongoing expansion of power by the executive and judicial branches due to the legislative branch refusing to challenge same. The negligence of Congress to check each abuse sets precedence for the next abuse.
To gain a quick understanding of the objectives of the U.S. Constitution I suggest that you complete one or more of the online courses offered by Hillsdale College.
