The Electoral College is a historic relic in our constitutional system. It’s basically never worked as intended. The original idea in the Constitution was to have state legislatures select a well informed deliberative body of electors to actually gather to choose a president and to have the second-place vote getter become vice president. The runner-up becoming VP was such a disastrous idea it barely lasted a decade before we changed it with the 12th amendment. By the end of the 19th century, all states gave up on having legislatures choose the electors, creating the very type of direct elections the system was meant to avoid.
