Despite how manifestly unqualified Trump is for POTUS, he seems to have been elected legitimately. The largest caveat in my eyes is the potential for voting booth malware that's been suggested by that prominent panel of computer scientists, primarily from U of Michigan. That issue ought to be investigated in those key states if there is evidence to suggest that Russian hackers manipulated the election. I, for one, believe it should be. (Edit to add: donated to Jill Stein'a campaign to demand a recount of election results in key states.)

But if Trump won the electoral college, I don't see the route to legitimately nullifying him as being an electoral college revolt. I understand that the framers suggested that the point of the EC is to prevent patently disqualified candidates from attaining office. But Trump is a moronic, blathering huckster. He's not a disqualified candidate. And his campaign was predicated on a typical electoral college result, meaning he purposefully campaigned in Michigan and Wisconsin to gain electors and not in California et al to gain popular votes.

The cost of marginalizing and discrediting the tens of millions who voted for Trump is arguably a greater cost than a Trump administration. Now, yes, Trump may be an existential threat. I'm sure Lessig would argue that. Nukes, climate change, setting us back a hundred years. But it's possible none of that may happen. And speaking as someone who's only lived in one civilization, it may be worth preserving the legitimacy of our system, as self-evidently gross as it is, especially if we have other legitimate routes of nullifying Trump. Impeachment, for example. That way the system that oversees the most complicated set of business, agricultural, military, civic, and regulatory entities the world's ever seen remains somewhat intact.

That said. I don't 100% agree with my explanation. What if an impeachment isn't legitimate enough in the eyes of Trump voters, and it's just as "elitist" as an electoral college rebuke? Who knows. But my intuition is that the Democrats lost and there are lessons that must be learned. As much as I fucking hate that man.

EDIT: I reread Federalist 68, the most relevant Federalist paper on the subject. And any reasonable reading or interpretation of the paper would not contradict a view that the system of electors was instituted for such a situation as we find ourselves in today.

But I have a further quibble I can't quiet. "Publius" in the paper says:

Nothing was more to be desired [in designing an Electoral College] than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government...

But Trump may not have won because of any of these listed adversaries of republican government. The reason Trump won is because the voting population is apathetic, uneducated, and easily manipulable. Trump's victory was unaided by any of the nefarious enemies listed. That might be a legalistic and wordy reading, but if the reason that electors ought to vote their conscience is because a candidate won the election due to those specified enemies of republican government, then a vote of no confidence might not be warranted. We deserve a shitty president precisely because we saw nakedly what we were being offered and wanted him anyway.