While we’re at it, people also forget that presidents and senators were originally intended to be chosen by state legislatures, not the public. The idea was (a) they didn’t trust direct democracy at scale because it was akin to mob rule, as well as (b) it reflects the fact that the States, not the federal government, were supposed to have the majority of the power.
That’s also how we ended up with the Electoral College: it couldn’t be “one legislator, one vote” because state A has vastly more constituents per legislator than state B, so there had to be a sort of ‘compatibility layer’ to even things out.
The upshot is that the system we have today represents a half-assed attempt to switch away from the original design to a direct democracy system, which is why it doesn’t work properly and is inferior to either alternative.