The US electoral system for good or ill was known to all candidates at the outset. Trump won by that system, against the odds. Technically neither candidate had a majority, and I prefer a system with a runoff in that case. But for our current system, I think Phony Moderate had an excellent analogy.
I'm trying my damnedest to accept the result, but this is the second time the result of the people will be overridden by an accidental distribution of state boundaries. I don't know how you feel about Donald Trump, but I assume you at least supported Mitt Romney. I can't imagine you would feel differently from me if Mitt Romney had won the popular vote and was actually going to expand that lead with all of the remaining late ballots.
I wouldn't like the result if the tables were turned, but I wouldn't share the lack of acceptance. The laws for such things as dates for early voting, voting by mail, and provisional ballots also affect the result as does the EC, and sometimes are changed the same year as the election. In 2014 I watched a friend in a close race lead in the count at the end of election day, but lose two weeks after the election due to an new provisional ballot pilot program. Yet I didn't feel it was an unacceptable result, since everyone knew the law going into the fall campaign.
FWIW, here's an observation of mine in relation to your point that this is the second time in 16 years that this has happened.
What was the point of EC btw?
Madison preferred direct election but the Slave Power raised a stink because their franchise was much more restricted. Having Congress elect the President itself, like they now do in South Africa, was shot down because people were worried about 'intrigue'.
Madison also had a fear about the power of factions that might unduly impose their will on the nation as a whole without check. He perceived that these factions could be regional in nature and he didn't want a bare majority faction to defeat a substantial minority. De Toqueville described this as preventing a tyranny of the majority.
It is interesting to look at the last period in US history to see a split between the PV and EV winners, which was in the post-Reconstruction era. Both the 1876 and 1888 election saw the Dems win the PV yet lose the EV. The Dems had a huge surplus of votes in the Deep South and in 1888 a win of 49% to 48% in NY was enough to tip the EC to Harrison over the incumbent Cleveland.
Today the Dems have the same type of regional concentration of voters in the Northeast and West Coast that they had in the post-Reconstruction South. Narrow victories for the Pubs in key swing states can flip the EC as it did in both 2000 and 2016.
