How will the Electoral College affect anti-incumbent voting?

Here is an interesting historical perspective on the Electoral College:

In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that:

* was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own
rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government

* contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of
Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication
(so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been
thought desirable)

* believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry
St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not
downright evil, and

* felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying
was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the
office.").

How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without
national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance
between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the
States and the federal government on the other?
--emphasis added

In this context, we come up with this very interesting question:
How is it that the Electoral College is used to maintain the two-party system's strangle-hold on American politics?

For some potential anti-incumbent voters, the biggest hurdle is not that they want to vote for the Republican or Democrat who is currently representing them; it's that they don't want to vote for "the other guy." And, this is where third party or independent candidates come in. You don't have to vote for "the other guy," you can vote for a third party or independent candidate that better reflects your own political beliefs, and yet is NOT the incumbent and is NOT yet corrupted by the system. This is the choice each and every voter can make.

Yet, when it comes to electing the President of the United States, we the people do not get the priviledge of choosing for ourselves. Instead, the Electoral College assesses our votes in their individual areas and chooses for us. This is why sometimes the popular votes and the electoral votes don't exactly jive. It is also why presidential candidates focus on specific areas where they could potentially win a lot of electoral votes with less effort.

Now, the concern of many potential anti-incumbent voters

that I have come across is how can they vote for a third party or independent candidate when "it doesn't count?" While this is a concern for Senate and Congressional candidates as well, it comes into play even more strongly when we're talking about a presidential candidate. Many people have already heard the claims that Al Gore lost to President Bush in 2000, because far too many people chose to vote for Ralph Nader of the Green Party.

The Democrats had two ways to handle this situation. They could have seriously looked at their voting records and their party platform, and changed themselves to be more attractive to the many disillusioned voters out there. They could have, but instead they chose to attack third party and independent candidates and those who voted for them with accusations that they were responsible for Bush's win. Unfortunately, this tactic worked, because in 2004 there were less third party and independent votes, irregardless of the voters' political leanings. And now, two years later, that sentiment is still alive and well.

PBS had this to say in 2004:

Perhaps the most significant of the obstacles facing third party candidates is the winner-take-all system. In most states, the presidential candidate with the highest percentage of votes gets all the state's electoral votes.

"There's no reward for second place," said John F. Bibby, University of Wisconsin professor and co-author of the book, "Two Parties -- Or More? The American Party System". "With a single elected president if you're going to have a chance to win the states, which are all awarded on a winner-take-all basis, again you don't have a chance. The incentive is to form broad-based parties that have a chance to win in the Electoral College.

In his book, Bibby and co-author L. Sandy Maisel point to Ross Perot in 1992, who had widespread appeal but not enough to win a state completely.

While I realize there is not an incumbent presidential nominee in 2008, and thus it is six more years before voters will be facing this difficult choice once again, still I must ask:
Would knowing that the Electoral College would make it almost impossible for a thrid party or independent candidate to win the presidency prevent you from voting against an incumbent you disliked?

After all, the united power of the DNC and the GOP to marginalize your third party and independent choices is already enormous! Do you want the electoral system that was intended to protect you, to protect the corrupted incumbents instead? If you don't, then waiting until 2012 to say, "Hey, this isn't right!" won't do you any good. If this is a problem you think needs to be solved, then I'm asking you what do you think we can do about it starting now?