As with every election cycle, I heard much grumbling over the electoral college this cycle, mostly from the left as expected but also a bit from the right. To those on the right - the electoral college is the reason we have Trump vice Clinton; Clinton won the popular vote while Trump won the votes of electors.
The founders of the US understood many things about the ancient and medieval world, and implemented some of these things into the way the US functions (according to the letter of the Constitution).
The US electoral college is the latest incarnation of a system which is thousands of years old, starting in the pre-Christian Germanic tribes and becoming formalized in the Christian Holy Roman Empire (Germany from the 800s to 1800s), which is also where many other concepts within the Constitution originate (along with Ancient Greece and Rome).
The purpose of the system is to balance urban population and power centers with more rural populations and industrial centers. It also acts to insulate the federal government from democratic processes. These two issues were constant concerns among the drafters of the Constitution and resulted in several other provisions in an attempt to minimize unbalance and chances of democracy taking hold.
I remain as I always have been, a staunch supporter of the electoral college system.