JPod imagines what would happen if McCain won the electoral college but lost the popular vote:
A McCain presidency under these conditions would be a model of institutional paralysis. With the exception of the veto, which McCain would of course relish more than any other presidential power, he would be among the weakest chief executives in modern times, if not the weakest. And it would be interesting to see whether the Electoral College itself could survive it. (It would be abolished, presumably, not by amending the Constitution but by passing laws in the states requiring electors to vote for the nationwide vote winner; such a law already exists in a few of them.)
The Dish 