The electoral college is at fault and not the best method for electing the president. In 4 instances, the president has lost the popular vote, but still became president through the electoral college's unfairness. That is a roughly a 7 percent fail acceptance.
The electoral college provides a possibility for a tie (249-249) and even a nominee to win with only about 22% of the popular vote due to the indefensible rules of the Electoral College.
With the winner-takes-all system, it distorts the presidential election by allowing nominees to provide extra weight to the needs of the swing states and less time at states their party is likely to lose.
The Electoral College needs to be replaced with a popular vote system that is more fair and systematically impossible to fail.