As mentioned above electrons will repel other electrons (force will drop with distance) So this repulsion force works across a fairly large gap like the dielectric in a capacitor or even 1m in air.
If that is so, then that's a big problem.
A circuit with a few very large capacitors there might be a Coulomb of charge 'in play'. For an given elementary charge, it has to be interacting with 6.24x10^18 other elementary charges in the circuit to find the overall force on it. That whole F = k Q
1 * Q
2 / d^2", summed up over all the charges. This is very unlike marbles rolling around on a flat surface, where marbles only exchange energy when in contact. But it gets worse. I might have a big bag of protons on the shelf, so they need to factor into the equation. Dave might have a really big bag of electrons under his desk in Australia, so that needs to be included.
And then there are the rovers on Mars, waggling electrons around in their antenna. So that needs to be factored in too... the circuit may in fact be the receiver for the signals from Mars rover, so you can't say that those interactions don't matter and don't occur.
If the true reality is based on charges interacting at a distance, then for any charge to know what is expected of it needs to interact with every elementary charge in the whole universe, and that means every charge knows all the others on a personal, first name basis - they are all sending each other little messages all the time. That would be truly amazing!
Then an atom of Carbon 14 in a carbon film resistor resistor decays, that's two new elementary charges that every other elementary charge in your circuit and the while universe needs to interact with. It just never stops!
If you are happy with that situation being how reality is, then by all means see the world as the sums of interactions of bulk quantity of elementary charges. It will be near enough in most cases. A few billion electrons here in this charge, another few billions over there. That is the lumped element model. So wires running next to each other are transmission lines are inductors and capacitors all the way along them.
In that case, if electricity was gravity, you will be safe knowing that the apple will always fall towards the ground, and you can attribute it to the uncountable number of atoms in the apple are each individually being tugged on by the even more uncountable number of atoms in planet Earth, based on an inverse square law everybody learns at school - F = G m
1 m
2 / d^2 - which very similar to the equation for interacting charges.
The presence of the electric field resolves all this false complexity. The charge interacts with the electric field locally. The field interacts with itself (like waves on a pond), combining and distributing information. The charge experiences all the interactions with other charges in the universe though their combined effect on the electric field exactly where it is. A charge doesn't need to communicate with Mars - that information is already there in the field. Those elementary charges can now stop writing their messages to all the other charges in the universe, and just go with the flow, directed by the electric field exactly where it is.
And if something dramatic changes, like somebody connects a battery to a wire? That energy and information spreads out in the Electric field, causing charges in the wire to move until the field inside the wire is once again nearly flat (this is the "electron wave"), and all the 'potential difference' between the wires is the energy in the field between wires - there because of the battery.
(once again this all ignore the magnetic field, which is actually needed to receive signals from Mars...)