Why We Have an Electoral College to Select the President

When we individual voters vote for candidates for President of the United States, we are actually voting for electors who meet later to cast the official votes electing the President. These electors are expected to (not required to) vote for the candidates they represent.

Some Reasons for the Electoral College System
There are multiple reasons that our Founding Fathers decided to do things this way.

One reason is that it gives a bit more weight to the less populous states than the popular vote, making it less likely that a few populous states would control the election.

Another reason is that the Founding Fathers distrusted the general public and wanted to give a select group of chosen people the authority to make the final decision.

An additional reason is that in case of the need for multiple ballots to decide an election at a party primary convention (which sometimes happens in primary party conventions where no candidate gets the majority of the votes on the first ballot), it is easier for the "electors" (actually delegates in the primary election) to do the multiple votes than to have multiple elections.

In the general election in November, if no candidate receives the majority of the electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives selects the President from among the three candidates receiving the most votes. The United States Senate would select the Vice President.

The Process of Becoming President

The process of becoming President was illustrated in a U.S. government poster revised in November 2014 that is pictured below in a photograph I took of it on March 15, 2023. A few things have changed since the 2014 poster, but the electoral college system remains in place.

Sources for More Information and Closing Thoughts
Numerous websites discuss the electoral college in more detail if you would like to learn more about it. Below I link to three of them:

http://www.historycentral.com/elections/Electoralcollgewhy.html

http://www.history.com/topics/electoral-college

https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html

The electoral college system isn't perfect. But it seems to have served reasonably well thus far.

NOTE: This post for Blogger, which was last revised on March 15, 2023, is to a large extent reprinted from a post I made on December 9, 2016, on Facebook.