Am I missing something with this procedure?
You have to check the authenticity of the Electrum download using GPG. There is a guide for doing that at
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0If you did not verify the Electrum binary's authenticity, then that is probably why you are losing coins instantly. I always check that all the GPG signatures match before using a new version of Electrum.