Is there any plausible argument in favor of the electoral college?

[pragmatic liberal]

There would need to be national ballot standards and there would probably need to be some kind of national presidential ballot (rather than have each state determine what candidates are on the ballot).

But if you can do that - and really that's just an issue of will - there's really no reason you couldn't do a national recount.

Besides, what many people fail to realize is that recounts are arguably much less likely in a national race than in a state-by-state race. Simple statistics posits that rates of error decline as you increase the sample size. A 1% difference in a 1,000,000 vote election is much more likely to be the result of error - and thereby overturned in a recount - than a 1% difference nationally in a 180 million vote race.

I mean, what election would have required a recount in the popular vote? Most statisticians say none in the past 100 years. Maybe Kennedy vs. Nixon. But there were recounts in 1916, 2000, and 2004 (in California, Florida, and Ohio). None of those elections would have required recounts if only the national popular vote counted.