Whenever the electoral college decides a close presidential election there is a chance that the president will not have won the “popular” vote.  This always inspires calls for a scrapping of the electoral college and using the popular vote to determine the presidency.  But there is an obvious flaw with this thinking which can be illustrated with the recent election of Donald Trump.

Democrats think that if there were no electoral college HRC would have one this past election because she had more popular votes.  But that might not have been the outcome without the electoral college.  If both candidates knew that this past election would be based on a simple majority, then both candidates would have campaigned much differently (mostly in CA and NY).  The results would have been different in every state.

For a clear explanation of why we should KEEP the electoral college you should read this article by the Cato Institute,  and this explanation of the pros and cons of the current system.