I think another point to be made is that the president is supposed to represent the nation. If more people in the nation are liberal, the president should be liberal, same with conservative. States wouldn’t be ignored in this system, they could just resolve their state issues using their own state government. Also, on the topic of the electoral college “protecting people” the electoral college’s winner take all nature causes safe states to be ignored. This causes swing states to be tyrannical. This last one could possibly be fixed by giving states proportional votes, but that would probably cause democrats to win so I’m guessing you’re against it.