The electoral college is silly and completely unnecessary. Let's address the common arguments against it:
"This is a partisan effort to benefit the Democrats (or the Republicans)."
Recent history does not bear this out. Neither party really has much of a consistent edge in the electoral college. If we want to see which party benefited from the electoral college in each election, you need to look at the tipping point state (i.e. the state that would allow either candidate to win, assuming they each won all the states in which they did better than that state), then compare that state's vote to the national vote. Here's the tipping point state for each of the last five elections, and how much each party benefited from the electoral college relative to the popular vote:
2008 - Colorado - Dem +1.7%
2004 - Ohio - Dem +0.4%
2000 - Florida - Rep +0.5%
1996 - Pennsylvania - Dem +0.7%
1992 - Tennessee - Rep +0.8%
As you can see, neither party has a consistent edge in the electoral college...and neither party has a very big edge anyway.
"This will unfairly disadvantage rural people."
False. In a popular vote system, every vote counts exactly the same, regardless of whether you live in New York City or Roundhead, Ohio. Our current system is what unfairly weights some individuals' vote more heavily than others.
"Candidates will ignore most states and just concentrate on the biggest population centers."
Even if that were true (and there's no reason to think it is), it isn't as though the current system is any more fair. Under the electoral college, candidates STILL ignore most states and focus on a completely arbitrary collection of "swing states."
"Think of what happened in Florida in 2000. Do we want a nationwide recount?"
Statisticians will confirm that this is virtually impossible. What happened in Florida was already quite unlikely, from a statistical perspective. But about 20 times more votes were cast nationwide in 2000 than in Florida, making it vanishingly unlikely that we would ever need to do a national recount.