Well you do have a point it is not purely derived from the French, is even older then that:

https://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php

Citation from that site:

"The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons."

End of citation

That then it developed into the Electoral College that is today, thats no wonder, same did Democracy, and The Republic, instead of Emperor, now a President is elected.

You have to remember that even today in law-school Roman Law is tought.

The notion of the Republic can be found in Plato's writings, few hondered years before the Roman empire.

As I am brought up with a different undertanding of Democracy (Both US and most Europe are democratic) I tend to see the electoral college as a fixup of the old Roman Republic, exactly as you say, to protect the people from the Tyrany of the Majority.

USA was the first country in the modern world to introduce a senate, and then a house of representatives was establish to futher strengthen the democracy of the new found Republic.

Thats why I say that according to my understanding and view of Democracy, such an electoral College is obsolete.

I have wrote that democracy is different in US and Europe and India. We need to accept that, but that does not mean we cannot have critisism on the understanding of democracy.

The Democracy that we have today is far from the Democracy that was thought up in Ancient Greece in the times when Plato.

He wrote, one of what could be seen as, the first Sci-Fi books, 'The Republic'.

Democracy as we know today is not perfect, is not absolute, neither can it be said that it is fair for all, but compared to what we had until now in some countries....It's the best we have.

That being said, I personally think that ther should be room for improvement in all understamdng and practitioning of Democracy.