The beauty of the current system is that the federal government gets no say in who is president by placing the election into the hands of the States. Imagine what Trump could have done if the federal government oversaw elections. The electoral college needs updated, but it might not be a good idea to replace it with a popular vote administered by the federal government
I believe the US requires stronger safeguards. The temptations to abuse power so great, the feeling that it is necessary to steer the world in the "right" direction by holding onto office so immense, that any centralized election system will be abused.
The decentralized election system of the US is extremely resilient to tampering from the top. I personally believe the decentralized nature of the US election system is vital to its democracy. Think of the decentralized election system as a check and balance on power rather than a fair count of each person's vote. That said, I think the US needs to do away with the electoral college middlemen and replace it with a direct vote tallied by each county that is reported by each State. The US also needs to make gerrymandering illegal
