Remember that the electoral college was devised at a time when there were 13 widely scattered states with various numbers of population (and as others mentioned, different rules on who could vote). At the time there were no formalized parties, and very limited communications between the different states. So how do you elect a leader?
The obvious first choice for election was - everyone runs, whoever gets the most votes, wins. First, the founding fathers were very skeptical of the unwashed massed and the ability of a popular figure to egg them on with outlandish promises. (Good thing that does not happen today). Second, with the limited communications of the time, most candidates were expected to be local - so the guy from New York or Boston or Virginia would probably get the most votes and candidates from smaller states or just one end of the country would never win.
So they devised a system where, unless the candidate won the election in enough states to get the electors, representatives of the popular vote, of half the country, they would not get elected. The system was weighted to give more influence to the smaller states to balance that population problem. If nobody got an electoral vote of 50% then the decision was up to congress, since they were so level-headed and knew better than the voters. (Note too, originally, each elector got 2 votes and the guy with the second most votes was VP - so a bit of balance there if the vote became regional.)
The FF generally thought that only someone wildly popular like war hero General Washington would get the 50% by taking so many states; after that, regional candidates would all split the vote and fall short of that 50% and congress would decide. What they failed to foresee was that factional parties put the government above local interests and united around a single candidate for the whole country. Only twice did the vote go to congress, and once it was because the winning party forgot to vote one less for VP than prez, causing a tie.
Nowadays it’s stalled by inertia and self-interest. A state controlled by party A (or D, or R) has no advantage in allocating electoral votes by popular vote or some such, because it puts their state and hence their party at a disadvantage. 55 electoral votes for California or 35 for Texas go solidly to one party. Opening it up would mean that the Democrats (CA) or the Republicans (TX) would be tossing away up to half those electoral votes. Even if Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida did so - they typically have about 50-50 popular vote, so now losing that state would mean losing 3 or 4 electoral votes, not 20 or 29; candidates would not spend anywhere near as much time there, nor would their policies leading up to an election pour as much pork into the state.
So the change has to be an all-or-nothing change, where all the states at once choose to change (Constitutional amendment). However, consider the last two electoral wins where the popular vote differed were Trump in 2016 and Bush-W in 2000 - both Republicans. But Republicans control both houses and the presidency for the next 4 years (2 at least) and control many of those small states like Montana where they get a disproportionate extra clout. The future population growth is more likely to be in more diverse states where Democrats get more votes; until there is a tidal change in who controls Washington, it’s probably not a popular concept.
The other danger is that if pure voter results are what matters, rather than an electoral college, then what? Third and fourth parties get more clout. Do we stick with “If anyone gets less than 50% it goes to congress?” In 1992, the vote was 43% Clinton, 37% Bush, 19% Perot. How many candidates should be counted? What if the vote is 30%, 28%, 22%, 20% - who is president “by the will of the people”? Do you go to a 2-way run-off afterwards? (Could you survive two elections in one month?) As you can see - a BIG can of worms, which is why the system hasn’t changed.
