No. Everyone should have an equal say. That's what national popular vote ensures. Clinton got over 2m more votes than her opponent, but will not be President. That's not democracy.
I completely agree with your point about limiting executive power.
If the election were a popular vote, the candidates would campaign for that. They'd focus more on big cities etc. There's no guarantee Clinton would have won the popular vote if that had been the case.
Edit: If you're downvoting could you explain why?
Seriously?
Second: my response wasn't to Heritage, but to skirunman above, who didn't explain any of this stuff either. If you want to ding me for attacking the source, you need to cop to the fact that the whole subthread is an appeal to authority. And that authority is pretty suspect.
Politicians across the spectrum have either defrauded their people with "democracy" rhetoric, or accepted it as a de facto standard for the modern age. Which one of the two, I'm clearly not possessing of the answers.
The Heritage Foundation is smart enough to realise the EC favours Republicans and therefore the policies it promotes and so will spin anything to make that seems like a good idea, because the will of the people being enacted would work against their goals.
Finally, and more a reply to the parent comment, even a popular vote within a two-party system can be suboptimal in some ways and so be less than an ideal "democracy". Ranked choice voting or similar systems can stop "regulatory capture" of the two main parties from denying the voters a legitimate voice.
I suppose it was kind of a rotten trick to not tell the Democrats about the Electoral College beforehand, yeah.