I've read a ton of analysis on the creation of the EC and there is a lot of bs going around. That this is meant to really protect small states. This came down to Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Those flip, it's going the other way. Forget the rust belt and forget Nevada. That's where the campaigning was focusing. All those are top 10 states in population with the exception of NC being number 11. How is that helping small states when the campaigning is in big states? It's not. You are wrong.
The primary reasons the founding fathers came up with the EC after considering a couple other systems was to 'protect' the possible tyranny of the masses if they voted in some criminal or despot. That and to prevent the highest populated states from instilling a 'favorite' son as president. Back then it was 13 states, now we have 50. The odds of one state installing a favorite son have severely diminished. Regardless, it just hasn't happened. If that was a worry we'd have many more instances of the popular vote and EC not jiving in our history. It just doesn't happen much at all.
And look at the popular vote in the 2 instances in modern history the EC overrode the popular vote. Gore in 2000 and Hillary in 2016. They won the popular vote but lost the EC but the margin of popular vote victory compared to the overall popular vote count, it wasn't by all that much. Enough for it to be a victory but by no means some sort of repudiation by the masses. The EC didn't prevent some massive tyranny of the masses, not even fucking close. Those were close races.
And in elections where the Electoral count victory was massive, often times the victors popular vote count was not nearly as large ratio wise as was their Electoral count. That just goes to show that it's more often the EC who gives us lopsided victories while the popular vote can keep it closer:
"Even in the vast majority of U.S. elections, in which the same candidate won both the popular and the electoral vote, the system usually makes the winner’s victory margin in the former a lot wider than in the latter. In 2012, for example, Barack Obama won 51% of the nationwide popular vote but nearly 62% of the electoral votes, or 332 out of 538.
Looking back at all presidential elections since 1828 (when presidential campaigns began to resemble those of today), the winner’s electoral vote share has, on average, been 1.36 times his popular vote share – what we’ll call the electoral vote (EV) inflation factor."
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...des-are-easier-to-win-than-popular-vote-ones/