What are seen as some flaws in the electoral college?

1) In close elections, the winner of the Electoral College may not have won a majority of the popular vote. (However, the only instance in which a candidate who received a majority(50%+1) but lost the election was in 1876; in 1888 and 2000 the winner of the popular vote lost, but no candidate had a majority.)

2) Electoral College members are chosen based on party loyalty and almost always vote in accordance with party wishes, not the will of the people. In fact, in some states it is against the law for an Electoral College member to vote against their party; however, these laws are unenforceable.

3) If under extreme circumstances the Electoral College is tied or deadlocked or there are unresolvable disputes over the validity of election returns, the House of Representatives chooses the president, using even more eccentric rules than the Electoral College. Each state gets one vote regardless of size, meaning Wyoming's vote would be in equal standing with California's, and conceivably a candidate with only a small fraction of the popular vote could win. However, this hasn't happened since 1824.

Of course, this all assumes that a direct popular election is preferable to an indirect election. The Electoral College also carries certain advantages over a popular election, including the fact that under the Electoral College, one candidate nearly always wins a majority of the electoral vote (regardless of their showing in the popular vote) and there is little need for runoff or second-round voting. And also, since the elections are compartmentalized by state, in extremely close contests, there is no need for costly and exhaustive nationwide recounts of 100+ million ballots.