For me it's not the level of indirection of the EC that is the problem as much as that the EC votes are not democratically apportioned. The point about putting the campaign before more voters is certainly valid, but the margin magnifying properties of having the election be decided state-wise also has value in a non-parliamentary system where extremely close elections still have to have binary outcomes instead of the possibility of coalition rule, so I will grant that some aspects of the EC system do have value in the particular US setup, but it has gotten to the point where the basic population misrepresentation is a bigger problem than the value of any of its virtues.