The electoral college proved its worth to me by preventing California from stealing the election with illegal votes.
And, really, it isn’t fair, even to their candidate, if everything were Calvinball. Because how would that candidate know what to try to maximize?
If Donald Trump had to get more popular votes, I don’t think we would have seen him wiped out. He’d have been working the deeper red states, like Texas and the deep South, harder, since putting it over the line isn’t what would count — rather, what would count is how many national votes he got. The result: rust belt states, in which he eked out small margins, would have gotten a lesser consideration, and might suffer more in his follow-up.