Why do you vote for president when the electoral college picks the president?

Answer 1

The popular vote decides who the electors will be. The people elect the electors and the electors elect the President. Furthermore, the electors swear to vote for a particular candidate. The voters know in advance how the electors they choose will vote.

Answer 2

You should vote because the electoral college's vote goes to the delegate of whom one the state. That is why America is a Republic Democracy which means one person represents a lot of people. In a Direct Democracy you would be voting and then the popular vote would win. But the electoral colleges votes are done off of the popular vote.

Answer 3

The electoral college only awards votes if the candidate has in fact won the popular votes in that state. So you really can't have one without the other. The problem is that some states are treated as more important-- they have more electoral votes. So it is still possible to win a number of states and lose the presidency, if all the states you won were smaller states with few electoral votes. That is why so much of the focus of the 2008 and 2012 elections were on the states which have a large number of electoral votes, such as Florida and Ohio.