Electoral College Dropouts

Do ordinary people get to elect the President? The answer to that question is: no. Party bosses pre-select candidates already amenable to them, and then allow the people to vote on that shallow pool of prospects. It's like a parent who manipulates a child whose fashion sense she doesn't trust. Rather than seeing her little one in mismatched clothes with stripes and polka dots, she pre-selects two different outfits that she [the mother] chooses, and then allows the child to pick from among the two. That way, the child feels as if she got to make a choice--when in reality, her choices were pre-screened. Likewise, with Americans in the political process. But was it supposed to be this way? Were oligarchs supposed to be choosing our Presidents for us? What about the electoral college? In the aftermath of Mike Pence's actions in the last Presidential election, people are asking why he assumed that the electoral college had no power. When did this happen? When did this abrogation of our Constitution take place?