Re: So...
No, the Electoral College is a way of trying to keep the 3 governing powers separate and independent.
The US Republican model is based on the UK Parliamentary model which has 3 competing concerns:
1) The common people: House of Commons (House of Representatives)
2) Large Landowners: The Senate (Senate)
3) The Monarch: The President
In the Parliamentary model, the Senators and Monarch have lifetime representation. The idea of life time occupancy was done away with in the Republican model. The problem is how to ensure that you elect 3 independent and competing concerns.
1) People vote for the members of the House of Representatives. The distribution of seats tries to reflect the population distribution - so California has the most representatives (53) and South Dakota the fewest (1).
2) The Senate gives each State an equal representation (2 seats).
3) The president is elected by the Electoral College. The college electors are neither house representatives, nor senators, and intended to be independent of them. The number of college electors in each state is equal to the numbers of Representatives + Senators - so California gets 55 electors and South Dakota gets 3. How college electors vote varies from state to state, but most states simply vote in the direction of the popular vote of that state.
In the 2016 election, the electoral votes weren't solely split between Trump and Clinton, some electors voted other candidates for the presidency:
Donald Trump recieved 304 votes
Hillary Clinton received 227 votes
Colin Powell received 3 votes
Bernie Sanders received 1 vote
John Kasich received 1 vote
Ron Paul received 1 vote
Faith Spotted Eagle received 1