Why we have the Electoral College in 2016

The Los Angeles Times: "The electoral college has always been the wrong way to choose a president." Because racism!

And I'll bet you didn't know this, but the LA Times does:

The electoral college is enshrined in the Constitution, but that doesn’t necessarily make it constitutional. 

Wow, let's have some fun here:

• The freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution, but that doesn’t necessarily make it constitutional.
• The right of the accused to remain silent is enshrined in the Constitution, but that doesn’t necessarily make it constitutional.
• Freedom of the people peaceably to assemble is enshrined in the Constitution, but that doesn’t necessarily make it constitutional.

Where would you stop?

However, the LA Times' snit fit of an editorial is demolished, IMO, by one simple fact: "Clinton's Popular Vote Win Came Entirely From California."

Overall, Clinton received 2.8 million more votes nationally than Trump. In California "she got a whopping 4.3 million more votes than Trump." But:

Popular vote total:Trump: 62,958,211
Clinton: 65,818,318
_________________
Clinton: + 2.8 million 

Popular vote total outside California:Trump: 58,474,401
Clinton: 57,064,530
_________________
Trump: + 1.4 million

Update, Dec. 21: Final tally shows Trump beat Clinton by 3 million votes outside of California and New York.

Another way of looking at it:

Since the electoral college meets to cast its votes today, here are a couple of observations about this election.

First, despite the Democrats' insistent claims that Clinton won the popular vote, in fact no candidate won the popular vote because no one garnered, nationally, 50 percent plus one of the total votes cast. If we had in place the exact system that the losers of this election say they want, Clinton still would not be taking the oath on January 20 because absent both an electoral college and a majority of the vote, the US House of Representatives would elect the next president.

Second, electing a president on nothing but the national vote total means that California and (to a lesser extent) New York would decide every election. It is exactly a tyranny of the majority that the founders wanted to avoid.

We cannot let only one or two states select a president every four years, effectively disenfranchising the rest of the country. The electoral college is working just as it is supposed to.

Update: The generally Democrat-friendly MarketWatch piles on, too: The electoral college "prevented a single region (in this instance, a single state) from overruling the verdict of the more populous and diverse nation."

Donald Trump’s election is difficult for many Americans to accept, but there is no good reason to question its democratic legitimacy. For better or worse, Trump won the presidency by constitutional and sensible democratic rules that guided both campaigns and were known to any politically conscious citizen. He also won the national popular vote cast outside of the single state of California. Moreover, Clinton won all of California’s 55 electoral votes despite the fact that 4.3 million of the state’s voters voted for Trump. That big winner-take-all advantage for California’s Democrats and Clinton was certainly felt, but it wasn't enough to override her losses in many other states.

Under our electoral-vote system, American voters elected a national president, not California’s choice. It is in the nation’s interest for Democratic Party’s leaders and for Clinton voters to fully recognize the legitimacy of the election as they had urged Trump to do after the third presidential debate.

The Electoral College system worked as it should. It did not “misfire.” The election’s outcomes were ultimately about what Americans wanted and what they did not want — not about electoral mechanics.

The electoral college ensures that we have a nationally-elected president, not regional or even single-state one.