(This post will necessarily be US-centric. My apologies to anyone who might be reading from outside the US. Please enjoy the inanity and insanity of our political system from a safe distance.)
I voted this year in the general election, but I didn't vote for president.
Neither did you. I never have, and almost certainly neither have you, and almost certainly neither has anybody that either of us know.
I did cast a vote for an unknown slate of people who will, I think, at some point in the future get together and cast a different ballot that will then be collated together with similar ballots from similar groups of unknown people from other states in a process that gives greater weight to certain categories of US citizens over other categories of US citizens. Those 500-odd folks will vote for president. The rest of us do not vote for president.
I don't know who these people are. Neither, I'm guessing, do you. My ballot didn't say who they are. My ballot listed lines for "BIDEN and HARRIS" and "TRUMP and PENCE" and a couple of third party candidates. I filled in the bubble for one of them, but for some reason that strains credulity, that was not a vote for the pair of people that I was purportedly voting for. That was in fact a vote for that other unknown slate of people who will, I think, vote for the person that I want them to vote for when there is actually a vote for president, which will occur several weeks from now, entirely out of public sight. [1]
This unknown slate of electors consists of people who I somehow don't know, even though I just voted for them. I spent a bit of time just now on Google searches trying to figure out who they are, and I failed. If I wanted to contact them between now and the actual presidential election in a few weeks, I wouldn't have any idea how to do that. If I wanted to explain to them why it's critical that they vote the way I think they should -- to provide facts and evidence, to argue passionately about why I think that the decision that they will make is one of the most weighty that has occurred in my lifetime -- I can't. Because I don't know who they are. Even though I just voted for them.
It seems that the basis of the electoral college system is that the rest of us, the great uncultured masses of humanity, cannot be trusted with as essential a decision as electing a president. And so we must elect a secondary body of reliable, worthy folk, the electors, the elect, who can be trusted with the awesome power of such a choice. Their wisdom, their worth and uprightness, are the only thing that stands between us and the fearsome outcome of participatory democracy, and we can trust in their ability to guide us to the right outcome.
But I don't know who any of them are. And neither do you.
A few specific comments on this:
[1] Specifically, on December 14th, I _think_. ". . . on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment . . . ." 3 U.S.C. ยง 7.