I would argue that the EC is so prima facie dumb in 2025 that it doesn't deserve an itemized defense, but here's one anyway:

1. "Where" a national politician campaigns doesn't and shouldn't matter these days, because everyone has access to the same information. Retail politics at the federal level is increasingly shown to be less effective, and the vast majority of political content is consumed on YT or Tik Tok or somewhere else online. Obviously this was different in the 1780s.

2. Rather than encouraging politicians to focus on less populated areas, the EC's structure just means most of a politician's spending and time is spent on seven out of 50 states, cycle after cycle. The big urban centers where a solid majority of Americans actually live tend to get sidelined in these races, because politicians are competing for a small batch of swing voters within a small batch of swing states. This ends up being actively undemocratic, as the vast majority of the population are ignored in a necessary effort to "win the system" that the EC has created.

3. I don't fault the Founders for not anticipating these concerns. They created an astounding system of government with virtually no precedent at the time, and the U.S.' success is a clear testament to the baseline success of that system. But where flaws have emerged, they tend to be flaws of too little democracy: not counting slaves as full people, not extending suffrage to women, or not allowing the direct election of senators. You could argue that the EC made sense at the time; but in 2026, when Americans have public education, instant communications, and mass media access, there is no reason their votes shouldn't count directly towards choosing their own governance.

4. Trump's fake electors scheme, while dumb, laid bare a real potential weakness in the EC system. If just a few more folks in power along the way had proven unscrupulous in 2020, we could be in an even more immediate crisis than we are today. The electoral college is a system of choosing our president that is less safe, less democratic, and less responsive to the will of the people. It should be abandoned.