Does YOUR Vote count??

Ok so I was in my public administration class today and the topic of voting came up. My professor says that our voting rights are so important in the US because it give us an opportunity to help congress on passing certain laws. Yet, I had  to disagree with him because let's face it if our vote did count then why wasn't Al Gore our president in the 2000 election?? Another question is why do we even have the electoral college still? Our founding fathers put the electoral college because it was only to grant voting priviledges to those people who were able to read and write. NOW society has changed and many of us know how to read and write so why hasn't Congress taken away the electoral college??? Is our government telling us that we need to have money in order to be part the electoral college??

Let me know what you guys think!!