After the second presidential election in 16 years where the loser of the popular vote has gone on to win the presidency, there has been many electrons spent on discussing the merits of the EC. The EC has lots of defenders across the whole political spectrum. Usually it boils down to that's how then founders created it and therefore it shouldn't/can't be changed because:
It’s hard
It’s a bulwark against an incompetent president
It ensures that all states’ concerns have been heard, and not only the big ones.
I'm not really going to dwelve into these arguments, as I assume they are well thought out and rationalized. However, since the defender feels the EC is an OK institution, the question I have, and I think should be asked to any defender of the EC, is how big of a margin in the popular vote is acceptable for the EC to override?
Gore won by 0.5%. That is obviously OK, because the EC defender has gone through that. Hillary won by close to 2% and that is still fine. How about someone winning by 10%? Is that ok? As long as we count only 2 parties, it is possible that someone can win 75% of the popular wote and still lose the presidency. Is a margin like that ok?
Of course a 75-25 election going to the 25%er is a hypothetical construct that is extremely unlikely to happen, but any system designed to allow this scenario to happen isn't really democratic by design. It just have been democratic by accident.
So the question to anyone supporting the EC is, are you comfortable with the EC voting a president into power no matter how much they lost the popular vote? If you are comfortable with it, are you able to see any potential problems with such a winner? If you are not comfortable, what is the margin where you feel the Eac winner is not really a legitimate president?