Who elects the president?

I am sick of reading comments from people insisting that Americans are not stupid enough to vote for the candidate who eventually wins. We get these arguments every election. For example, voters weren't supposed to be stupid enough to reelect Barack Obama. He ended up winning fairly easily.

Ultimately, voters are merely pawns. We are all given skewed information designed to sway our opinions. We are being told to who to vote for, and we blindly obey. Who is dictating our votes? The media.

The American media is highly influential and incredibly corrupt. When it comes to politics, the information provided is based off of who they want to win the election. They hit extra hard against candidates they don't like. They write articles to defend their favorites. They repeatedly try to pass opinion off as fact. In the end, we have to base our decisions off of what we know. The media ensures that what we don't know enough to make informed decisions. Instead, we vote for the candidate portrayed as the best.

Not all of the media is on the same side, and sometimes other forms of media bias can counter attempts to sway political opinions. A good example of this is the media's fear mongering leading to the reelection of George W. Bush. The media made a late push against him, but he was generally viewed as the candidate that would fight hard against the overstated terrorist threat.

The media made it clear very early in the latest campaigning process that they decided to elect Hillary Clinton as our next president. I don't trust voters to overcome the media's love affair with the candidate competing with Donald Trump for the title of most corrupt and least trustworthy (although those blindly loyal to less influential conservative media sources such as Fox News will not vote for Hillary). Of course, the more honorable candidates (third party) are conveniently ignored by the media. For that reason, most people don't even realize that they have a choice other than a Hillary or the Republican candidate.