This is a common misconception stemming from looking at PoW through the Paxos/RAFT prism. In Paxos a leader is elected, then the leader decides the order of events. But that's not a valid comparison, because in PoW the supposed "leader" does not get to decide anything at all - the block has to be put together prior to "winning the election" (because the block is the input to the SHA).
PoW is a radically different approach - there is no leader, but there exist indisputable points in "blockchain time", and the order of blocks is determined by the longest chain, which is essentially a matter of chance.
Another related misconception is that PoW is good, but proof-of-stake is better. In fact, PoW is the evolution of PoS, not the other way around. A PoS based digital money was described 1998 by Wei Dai [1], but that approach had flaws that would only be overcome by a system described Nakomoto's Bitcoin paper.
1. http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt (B-Money, Wei Dai, 1998)
"Each server is required to deposit a certain amount of
money in a special account to be used as potential fines
or rewards for proof of misconduct."