The left needs to come up with a better case against the Electoral College
At bottom, Ackerman simply does not understand the full reason for the Electoral College. He correctly points out that one of its purposes was to distance the selection of the president from the passions and intrigues of faction; and he claims that with the rise of parties, this "filtering" function was largely vitiated. But not entirely. One of the post-1800 Electoral College's salutary accomplishments is that it provided a clearly legitimate president when the party system had broken down, e.g., in 1860 and 1912. Moreover, political scientists have long demonstrated that the Electoral College, with the developing tradition of winner-take-all in each state, works against a multiplicity of parties. The mechanism actually forces parties to seek coalitions among factions, thereby mitigating faction's deleterious effects and fulfilling the original purpose that the framers had in mind.Furthermore, the Electoral College is another example of the framers' plan to include the states in the structure of the central government. As the Constitutional Convention progressed, the delegates realized that it was not enough to divide power between the central government and the states. By itself, that would inevitably engender serious conflict. Instead, the framers included the states as constituent elements in the central government. It was the people of the several states that ratified the Constitution. It would be the states, in one form or another, that would have to agree to amendments. The states would select the senators, and determine who could vote for the House of Representatives. They would set the time, place, and manner of holding federal elections (subject to congressional override). Even in the House, members had to reside in the states from which they were elected. The states would provide the militia needed by the central government. The states would determine how and when presidential electors would be chosen, and the electors would cast their votes in their respective state capitals. And if the Electoral College failed to reach a majority, the House of Representatives, voting as states, would determine the result.
A withering takedown of arguments against the Electoral College. Read it.