You did an excellent comprehensive job in elucidating many of the shallow arguments for and against the EC. But there are some very big underlying assumptions in these arguments pro and con. Mainly it is about how we define democracy and how we define the USA. Democracy is NOT defined as one person = one vote, as many seem to believe. Democracy is merely a political system that approximates “rule by the people.” How we get there is a completely different matter.

The other big assumption is that our national leader, the POTUS, is the leader of 330 million American citizens, when actually he is the leader of 50 united states. There’s a big difference between the President of France and the POTUS that seems to get lost in the weeds. Our nation is strong because it moves through history like a heterogeneous organism that adapts to change, not like a monolithic Leviathan that risks extinction. That resilience is due to a union of sovereign states that have adapted to a system designed to promote cooperation and compromise on shared interests. The decentralized nature of our union also allows for political differences that reflect different interests, like the different preferences of AR vs. NY. Arguments against the EC never get this deep into the matter because they are largely motivated by partisan ideologies rather than governing principles.

If we can get more objective about the design of our electoral system we can perceive the incentives that it generates and whether those incentives move us toward coherence or division (swing states, for instance, are the hallmark of democratic compromise — rather odd some would castigate them). The historical and empirical evidence all falls toward coherence, despite all the whining of those who lose democratic elections. The institutional structure is designed to force losers to adapt and come back and win the next election, not overthrow the process.

https://medium.com/@mharring54/electoral-college-good-bad-or-ugly-5949c28ee1fb