As the article linked by the OP shows, the Electoral College was a compromise made because elite white slave-owners wanted to ensure they retained the political power to continue holding human beings in slavery - and they wanted to retain that power to enslave by counting the enslaved people themselves among their numbers for purposes of political representation. Like so much else in our nation's history, slavery is again the original sin.
As for parliamentary systems being just as much of an aberration as the Electoral College, I'd say the problem there is that the overwhelming majority of industrial democracies in the world have parliamentary systems. So by definition they are the norm and not an aberration.
As for the curse of the U.S. two-party system, that is primarily a result of the winner-take-all Presidential system itself. Parliamentary systems don't have more parties by accident - multi-party democracy is much easier to sustain in a parliamentary democracy than in a U.S.-style Presidential system.
Along similar (or at least analogous) lines, I've always been struck by the fact that, for all the concern in the U.S. with checks and balances, a parliamentary system is, it seems to me, better at avoiding the kind of all-powerful Executive position that the U.S. Presidency has become.
Finally, the appeal of a parliamentary system to me is what was noted above - you are voting for a party with a clearly stated platform. It tends to keep political debates and campaigns more focused on policies and issues and less focused on individual personality and celebrity (of course there are exceptions - I am speaking in broad terms).