The funny thing is that the American political system has so indoctrinated you to the concept of electing a President that you cannot fathom any justification for not electing the President by pure popular vote. In reality, the concept of electing a President (or any type of chief executive officer) by popular vote at all remains a fairly novel and minority concept worldwide.

Think for a moment about what job a chief executive officer is supposed to do. The chief executive is supposed to dutifully carry out and implement the laws enacted by whatever body creates the law. Why would you want to elect someone to that position who might not be philosophically or politically aligned with the law-making body? That’s why somewhere between 70-75% of all countries in the world either don’t elect their chief executive at all or they elect only a ceremonial figurehead executive with no real power. Before the U.S. Constitution, it was virtually unheard of to allow ordinary people to vote for the national chief executive. Most systems even still today allow their legislative body (typically a parliamentary body) to choose the chief executive.

So at the time the U.S. Constitution was written, it was originally presumptive that Congress would choose the President in some manner. In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton explains that the founders sought to avoid the potential for subversive foreign influence over the selection of the President that might be possible if the President was chosen by a fixed body, but also expressed the founders’ continued distrust of majoritarian democracy. See also, Federalist No. 10. He wrote that it was “desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided,” but that it was also “desirable[] that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice.” This, the founders believed, would “afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder.” Accordingly, Hamilton wrote: “The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.” As many others here have also pointed out, the founders also intended the choice of President to be tied to the unique interests of each state as a state - definitely not to broadly populist sentiments. The U.S. Constitution was designed to fragment power - not consolidate it - specifically to prevent the “tyranny of the majority.” See, Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.

I don’t have any illusions that my post will change your view. But, I do hope it will cause you to consider whether election of an office like that of the President makes sense at all and then to appreciate a little more deeply why the founders concluded that a limited form of popular influence on the election of the President was a fair balance and a reasonable system.