you vote for people who then vote for the people you want, so why not just vote for the people you want?
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There are arguments for and against and some of the arguments were made in the context when the US had only just declared independence.
Fear that small states would be forever locked out of selecting the Presidents. The 14 original states were not quite as “united” as it may seem today. The electoral college is designed to give the smaller states a “larger” say in who becomes the president.
Although we think of the US as more of a “one person one vote”, “every person is equal” country, the idea of this kind of republic was fairly new at the time and power was still pretty concentrated among the land owners (think aristocrats but without the titles). They weren’t about to hand over power to the “people” – this idea was not very tested at the time (although it has a long history) Remember that the original Constitution did not count slaves as full people, nor did they allow women to vote.
In modern times, President Bush and President Trump shows that the current system does, in fact, “elect” presidents that did not win the popular vote.
The original plan was not to necessarily to have an election for president in each state like it is today. It was up to each state how to select the electros and in the fire president election 1788–89 it was only six of the eleven states that had a popular vote like today. In the other, it was the state legislature that selected the electors.
In 1832, only South Carolina did not have a popular election, There was a few more around the civil war but since 1880 all-state have hade a popular election on election day.
Why not change it today?
The number of electors is the number of senators (two for all) and representatives (At least one) in the House of Representatives for each state. So each state has at least 3 electros.
So Wyoming wit 560 000 inhabitants have 3 electors and California with 37 200 000 have 55 electors. That is one per 187 000 people versus one per 676 000 people or 3.6 times more elector per person in Wyoming vs Califonia.
So changing to a national popular vote would be bad for a part that has the support of the small states.
It is only in the election it 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016 that the winner did not get the popular vote. With the 2000 and 2016 winners were both republicans it is quite easy to understand that they do not what a change because it is likely bad for the.
The idea of the senate, in general, is that each state has equaled say and the house or representations should be representative of the population even if how man people that one member can represent have diverged over time with the huge difference in the population between states.
What is fair depending on how you consider the state as an important level or just the total population.
It is by the way not the winner take all electros in all states. In Maine and Nebraska, the electors can be split.
So it is for a historical reason and most of the time it did not matter. And now when it has been relevant in 2 of the last 5 election change is a advantage for one party so it is hard to change int.
Basically it exists so that the states that have larger populations aren’t the only ones that get to pick the president.
CPG grey explains it better than I. Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/tUX-frlNBJY
So in many states the electors don’t have to vote for who won their state. The point is that America was concived as a republic where the public was not trusted with power. It allows the governent to subvert the will of the people if need be.
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