The electoral college system our country has used for nearly 250 years is no longer a "reasonable measure" of who won the election?
Suppose there was a little Eastern European country where the election procedures were the same as the USA's. We would certainly criticize them every time the popular vote said A and the weird political procedure said B and got to overrule the popular vote.
In fact, if they had oil or it were otherwise advantageous, we would likely invade, fracture them into smaller countries more amenable to our interests, and then abandon them.
Until this century we mostly just got lucky, with only two misalignments in the 19th century.
We essentially have a rotten borough problem, though few want to acknowledge it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs
Ideally we'd go to preference-based voting, but just eliminating "let's make votes from rural areas vastly more important" as a voting system would be a huge start.
Also, California is arguably occupied. It is ruled by a federal government that lost an election by any reasonable measure. It lacks the right to secede due to a federal constitution which violates the generally acknowledged right of peoples to self-determination. Do you think three quarters of the states would ever vote to let the Californian cash cow secede? They milk it for all it's worth, all while complaining that California doesn't know what we're doing.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-f...
I left, but the first thirty years of my life were in California and it's a great place. It could be a lot greater without being yoked to an oppressive system that minimizes its vote, steals its cash, and actively opposes its aims in fields ranging from the environment, to immigration, to education, among others. We should stop pretending the US is united by anything more than coercion by the small states over the large. Would an independent California freely choose to join the US today? If not, perhaps we should reconsider whether this relationship is healthy. Perhaps other states should as well.