My wtf for tpday is that people talk about Hillory not winning, when she actually did get the popular vote, but an unaccountable second vote is held of people who aren’t required to vote the way they say they’ll vote that went for Trump.
Ignoring all politics just for a second, that is bullshit.
Basing on popular vote is bad because it because it gives all the power to major population centers. If the election was run by popular vote, Trump would have visited NYC, Los Angeles, and Chicago to steal moderate voters away from
crooked Hillary. He would assume that most of rural America is going to vote for him anyway, and that those votes are insignificant in the long run. He may very well have won the presidency regardless, with a slightly different campaign message.
The point of the electoral system is (theoretically) to distribute power across all the states. States with higher population are worth a bit more votes, but not overwhelmingly. You need to serve rural states' interests in addition to the urban ones'.
Although the Electors might be able to vote for whomever, in practice they almost always vote the way they're supposed to. (We could make it automatic, but it doesn't really change much.) The real issue, IMO, is that the way they're "supposed" to vote is winner-take-all. Example: Pennsylvania is worth 20 points. Trump got 48.8% of the state, Hillary got 47.7%. Think they should each get 10 points? Too bad! Trump: 20, Hillary: 0! This misrepresents the state's approval of Trump. (Maine and Nebraska do things differently, but they're only worth 2 and 3 points, respectively.)