he person you replied to argued that the electoral college is needed as states have different laws and circumstances that affect voter turnout and results, which is a fair point.

AFAIK, the president isn't there to represent the needs of the individual states. They're there to represent the needs of the people.

The Senate is there to cater to the needs of the states.

Why don’t you just meet in the middle and make every state cast their electoral colleges proportionately according to the popular vote in that state?

Functionally that wouldn't be much different from just allowing the popular vote, which would be fine as long as there's no bullshit coin flip nonsense like in the Iowa primary. The problem is actually getting every state to start using that system.

If California starts doing that for example, then all that would do is make it so a few of the electoral votes from California suddenly go to Republicans while Democrats gain literally nothing in return.

For every left leaning state that starts using proportional electoral college, it gets harder for Democrats to actually win the election. So it doesn't make sense to start doing it state by state, because whichever state does it is just going to make their own life harder.

The same thing is true for right leaning states. Every right leaning state that starts doing it will just make it harder for Republicans to win.

Then you have battleground states. Any contested state currently gets a ton of campaign dedication because their votes are extremely important. If any of them switch to proportional, suddenly their state is no longer important.

So battleground states will almost certainly never willingly use proportional voting like this, and left/right leaning states are against it too because it'll simply help the other side.

Getting every state to do it is a must, but it'll probably never happen.