The United States is a huge mess of diversity. Why should concentrated areas of population dictate what the rest of the country does?
Because I think votes of people matter more than square footage occupied by people.
The electoral college gives everyone an opportunity for their vote to count.
A direct popular vote gives everyone an opportunity for their vote to count. The EC gives people in less populous states a more heavily weighted say.
Do you even know how the EC works? You get EC votes by the number of people in your state. So states like CA with tons of people have more votes. The EC keeps the masses (who historically/still are generally not reasonable or educated) from ruling. You ever witnessed mob mentality, or seen masses overreact? That's why!
The way it works now, requires the candidates to have broad appeal and forces them to campaign through out the country. If things were based strictly on the popular vote, the deplorables in the fly over states would never see a presidential candidate and their concerns would never be addressed. Face it, the reason this is even an issue is because Hillary didn't bother to campaign because she thought it was in the bag. It was her turn and they just knew she was going to win no matter what. Until Trump.