I think a lot of people forget that US = United States. That is, states that are united. The electoral college attempts to "balance" the power that each STATE has to elect a president.
The election is a state-level function. In my opinion, to switch to a popular-vote-wins system is to basically say "hey everyone in other states, go ahead and decide for our actual citizens".
In that case Federal government has to regulate fewer things and needs to have less power. President's executive order will affect people in California too but somehow people in Wyoming had 2 times more power to elect this said president. I don't think this is fair at all. If you say States are given inalienable right to veto any and all law/executive order passed by the federal government, then you might as well just keep the senate (2 repr per state) and it could still be considered fair. But the current system blindly favors rural parts of the country.
Not really, it balances the power. The knob that can be turned is the number of electoral votes each state has. Whereas changing it to the popular vote would favor the populous states, and remove the knob completely, so there'd be no path to balancing the power between small and large states in national elections.
The election is a state-level function. In my opinion, to switch to a popular-vote-wins system is to basically say "hey everyone in other states, go ahead and decide for our actual citizens".