A Constitutional Republic means we elect representatives and they govern under the rules set forth by a Constitution. This is the U.S. form of government. Democracy simply means "rule by the people". So, a Constitutional Republic is by definition a democracy.
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By Pure Democracy, I'm assuming you mean Direct Democracy. We are not that. We elect a congress who makes laws, and we elect electors to elect the president. So far I think we agree, so let's continue.
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The Electoral College is meant to compromise between a vote in Congress and a popular vote. Rather than a pure popular vote, we delegate our votes for president to a group of 538 people who *might* vote according to popular votes of their district, or might not.
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Each state governs its members of the college differently. Most use a winner-takes-all system, so a 51/49% vote in Texas results in all delegates for Texas voting the same way as 51%. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see this increases the number of people misrepresented.
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In the 2016 election, Texas had two of its electoral college members vote against the popular vote anyways. Roughly only have the states have penalties for college members who vote differently than how they are pledged. Texas is not one of them.
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The 538 people who compose the electoral college are not transparently elected. They're proxy elected based on who you vote for, and you never even know who they are. As mentioned above, they don't have to align with who you think you voted for.
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So, the electoral college is a proxy vote system of people you don't know who don't have to align with your proxy vote anyways. Why did it exist in the first place? We turn to the Federalist Papers, where Hamilton and Madison defended the idea.
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They wanted a real debate on the president to occur, free from the influence of congress or political parties. A group elected by the people who met once for the sole purpose of choosing the president. They would be separated from factions and impulsive voters.
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Another reason that wasn't published was that it provided a compromise over how to deal with slavery, and using the winner-takes-all system and 3/5ths vote meant the states could hide anti-slavery movements in the state on the national presidential elections.
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There are multiple methods of altering the electoral college to improve its ability to reflect the will of the populous rather than the status quo. Removing it all together is one of them, and not among the worst outcomes.
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We can also remove the winner-takes-all system, or require that electors be clearly voted for rather than the presidential nominee. Removing the system is not antithetical to the ideas our country is founded on; we have far more national discourse than was ever dreamed of in 1776
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To be perfectly honest, I'm far less terrified about moving to a pure popular vote for presidents than I am about the growing inability of any politician to vote differently than their respective parties.
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