A popular vote was seriously considered while drafting the Constitution for these United STATES. The founders didn’t seem to think it was a contradiction. They went with the current solution because it’s hard to count a slave as 3/5ths of a person with a national popular vote.
That's silly, most modern democracies are organized federally and don't have this issue.
Most modern democracies -- that's correct. Only the USA is organized this way.
One might consider that later democracies learned from some of our mistakes.