Like here is a simple example of why it's harder to rig an electoral college vote
Say we have an election where popular vote is within 500k
Say electoral college is split in a way such that 23 states are cleanly (like 60%+) going to each candidate, and there are 4 contested states left.
In a popular vote approach, we could pump an additional 1 million votes split any way we'd like among the 50 states. In an election of 150 million voters we only need to add 1% of the total vote, and you can literally do it anywhere in the US. Very easy to blend an extra 100k votes into a state that got a large turnout and the polling wasn't close because it's going to be a small amount of votes proportionally . Do that 5 times and you've closed the gap. 10 times and you're winning.
Electoral college you either need to do it in one of those 4 contested states which are going to have a HEAVY amount of media and regulatory attention OR the amount of votes you need to add into the calculation to flip one of the uncontested states becomes completely blatant to the point where you don't even need to be paying attention. Flipping a 60-40 to a 50-50 would require an outrageous amount of fraudulent votes, enough that it would be impossible to really slip by. You'd need like 1/5 votes to be fraudulent to flip it. It's not plausible for that amount of fraud to be undetected even if people aren't particularly trying to.
Ultimately this isn't the main reason I think Electoral College has utility, but you're saying "it's harder to cheat in a popular vote election" and I'm saying the math of how polls work strongly disagrees with you. It would be much easier.
No problem!
This is a cute and pop genocide of love!