Does the US have a legitimate electoral system?

[Angrie]

At this stage the final outcome is not yet definitively known. But it appears quite likely, or at minimum reasonably probable, that Trump will win the electoral college but lose the national popular vote.

If so, that will be the 2nd time in the last 5 presidential elections in which this has happened.

In 2000, this was presumed to just be some weird quirk of an antiquated constitution that would never happen again. It was recognized that this was a profound problem, but was ignored.

So we have a problem here.

American institutions fundamentally failed to do anything to fix the problem after 2000, just as they have fundamentally failed to fix a whole host of other problems both before and after.

I think the only reasonable conclusion that any fair minded person could draw from this is that the US urgently needs serious thoroughgoing constitutional electoral reform.

The problem cannot be ignored once again, or else the US cannot be said to have what is usually regarded as a legitimate democratic form of government.