Readtangle.com has a great article on this topic, including a reminder that 2012 was so close that for a hot-second it appeared Romney might lose while having popular vote.
In 2020 they make an interesting point:
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"The argument that a national election would create more chaos than we have now is, perhaps, the single best argument for preserving the electoral college. Many of these arguments were written before this year’s election, but imagine the case that could be made after the last month. Imagine a world where Donald Trump, contesting the results of the election, did not have to go through the states to overturn results but instead had a federal government body, or official, that could impose its will on his behalf.
Imagine, as others have, a case where the national popular vote was within 100,000 or even 10,000 votes. Imagine the chaos of a full, 50-state recount in an election as divisive as the one we just witnessed. What would happen to the country? How could an incumbent leverage their power to change the outcome? How could the Supreme Court review challenges from a dozen, let alone 40 or 50 states, all with different election laws? What would we do in the weeks or months with no clear outcome?
But no perfect plan to fix it exists. The simplest solution would be to change nothing about our elections except the fact that, when the votes are all tallied and reported, we add them up and pick a popular vote winner. But then we’d need universal laws across the states to formalize the elections. This would require both federal rule and federal oversight. And if the federal government is deciding how states run elections, and then overseeing those elections, the ruling party — the executive branch — suddenly has more control over the outcome than a challenger. This is already an issue in the form of gerrymandering, but we’d essentially be nationalizing that problem. It’d also put us back to square one where we were 220 years ago: we’d face the issues of separating the powers of the federal government and our state governments."
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In 2020 they make an interesting point:
---
"The argument that a national election would create more chaos than we have now is, perhaps, the single best argument for preserving the electoral college. Many of these arguments were written before this year’s election, but imagine the case that could be made after the last month. Imagine a world where Donald Trump, contesting the results of the election, did not have to go through the states to overturn results but instead had a federal government body, or official, that could impose its will on his behalf.
Imagine, as others have, a case where the national popular vote was within 100,000 or even 10,000 votes. Imagine the chaos of a full, 50-state recount in an election as divisive as the one we just witnessed. What would happen to the country? How could an incumbent leverage their power to change the outcome? How could the Supreme Court review challenges from a dozen, let alone 40 or 50 states, all with different election laws? What would we do in the weeks or months with no clear outcome?
But no perfect plan to fix it exists. The simplest solution would be to change nothing about our elections except the fact that, when the votes are all tallied and reported, we add them up and pick a popular vote winner. But then we’d need universal laws across the states to formalize the elections. This would require both federal rule and federal oversight. And if the federal government is deciding how states run elections, and then overseeing those elections, the ruling party — the executive branch — suddenly has more control over the outcome than a challenger. This is already an issue in the form of gerrymandering, but we’d essentially be nationalizing that problem. It’d also put us back to square one where we were 220 years ago: we’d face the issues of separating the powers of the federal government and our state governments."
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