What I learned today: electing the President of the United State of America

I read nearly every word of the 8,300 some words (or ~19 pages) of the wikipedia article on the United State Electoral College.

I took away 2 major things from this exercise, among a lot of others:

1) I confirmed that you are indeed NOT voting for the President of The United States, as the ballot so indicates.

2) You are voting for the electors that will vote for the President.

I thought that the electors were already decided, thus your vote becomes ENTIRELY meaningless. This is not the case. The electors are decided base on the count in each state of the general populous, i.e. popular vote. This done about a month after the national public voting day. In 48/50 states the winner of the popular vote gets every elector for that state, each of whom have pledged to support that candidate. That does not mean that they are required to vote as such, they are not, but likely will. Thus each state, individually, is an all for one situation. It was not stated, but must be so, that each state gathers as many electors, for each candidate, as that state is allowed to have, and only those electors for the particular candidate who won the popular vote are actually used.

Another interesting result of my research is that it appears that, despite my past ignorant criticism of this system, it may indeed be more fair to the general populous. If the President were actually decided by popular vote, it may result in a candidate pandering to their base for maximum turn out, ignoring smaller states or contested regions, as well as focusing on major urban centers for maximum effect while neglecting rural regions. As it stands now the mid west "swing states" get a lot of attention, thus effectively forcing the candidate to appeal to a broader portion of the population, making them more of a national pleaser if you will.