system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why do Americans vote for the president if the final outcome is determined by the Electoral College?
gpt
The electoral college exists because we have a federal two-tiered governmental system. You can think of it as two separate governments. 

Since they are kind of like two separate governments, they have two separate sets of constituents (voters). The constituents in the state government are individual voters. **The constituents in the federal government are individual states**. 

When you vote for a senator or congressman, you are voting for someone else to then vote for you in the federal government. When you vote for president, you aren't really voting for president, you are voting for an electoral college delegate to then vote for you for president in the federal government.

So in a sense, you don't vote for anything directly in the federal government, the president included. You vote for someone from your state to vote for you federally.  The senators and congressmen cast their votes while in session in washington, the electoral college delegates cast their votes once at the electoral college also in washington (in december). 

There are many flaws with this system in representing the voters interest, particularly if you think that the voters are people, but the voters for president are states. Still, most states, 48 of them, have a winner take all system for electoral college votes. With that in place you could definitely argue that even the states interests aren't being represented accurately. 

Removing the electoral college would further erode the differences between state and federal government, but that is not to say there isn't room for improvements while still keeping the system.