“I think the popular vote would have been easier in a true sense because you'd go to a few places. I think that's the genius of the Electoral College. I was never a fan of the Electoral College until now.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/802972944532209664, quoted in * 2019-03-19 The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President Bandy X. Lee Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin's Press) New York 1250212863
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Donald Trump / Quotes / Donald Trump on social media / Twitter
2010s, 2016, November

2010s, 2017, February

Tweets on November 6 and 7, 2012, some of which were later deleted. Trump falsely believed Barack Obama had lost the popular vote. Trump’s flip-flop on the electoral college: From ‘disaster’ to ‘genius’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/15/trumps-flip-flop-on-the-electoral-college-from-disaster-to-genius/
2012

In China, p. 362.
1870s, Around the World with General Grant (1879)
Context: Looking back over the whole policy of reconstruction, it seems to me that the wisest thing would have been to have continued for some time the military rule. Sensible Southern men see now that there was no government so frugal, so just, and fair as what they had under our generals. That would have enabled the Southern people to pull themselves together and repair material losses. As to depriving them, even for a time, of suffrage, that was our right as a conqueror, and it was a mild penalty for the stupendous crime of treason. Military rule would have been just to all, to the negro who wanted freedom, the white man who wanted protection, the northern man who wanted Union. As state after state showed a willingness to come into the Union, not on their own terms but upon ours, I would have admitted them. This would have made universal suffrage unnecessary, and I think a mistake was made about suffrage. It was unjust to the negro to throw upon him the responsibilities of citizenship, and expect him to be on even terms with his white neighbor. It was unjust to the north. In giving the south negro suffrage, we have given the old slave-holders forty votes in the electoral college. They keep those votes, but disfranchise the negroes. That is one of the gravest mistakes in the policy of reconstruction. It looks like a political triumph for the south, but it is not. The southern people have nothing to dread more than the political triumph of the men who led them into secession. That triumph was fatal to them in 1860. It would be no less now. The trouble about military rule in the south was that our people did not like it. It was not in accordance with our institutions. I am clear now that it would have been better for the north to have postponed suffrage, reconstruction, state governments, for ten years, and held the south in a territorial condition. It was due to the north that the men who had made war upon us should be powerless in a political sense forever. It would have avoided the scandals of the state governments, saved money, and enabled the northern merchants, farmers, and laboring men to reorganize society in the south. But we made our scheme, and must do what we can with it. Suffrage once given can never be taken away, and all that remains for us now is to make good that gift by protecting those who have received it.

Two Twitter posts dated , as quoted in * 2016-11-15
Trump's flip-flop on the electoral college: From ‘disaster' to ‘genius'
The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/15/trumps-flip-flop-on-the-electoral-college-from-disaster-to-genius/
2016-11-15
Cf. Trump's interview on 60 Minutes as President-elect (13 November 2016): "I'm not going to change my mind just because I won. But I would rather see it where you went with simple votes. You know, you get 100 million votes and somebody else gets 90 million votes and you win. There's a reason for doing this because it brings all the states into play. Electoral College and there's something very good about that. But this is a different system. But I respect it. I do respect the system." ( transcript http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-donald-trump-family-melania-ivanka-lesley-stahl/)
2010s, 2012

2010s, 2018, Interview with Bill Kristol (2018)

2010s, 2012

Response by Long during an interview with the journalist Forrest Davis (1933); quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970).

Gopalkrishna Gandhi in: "The value of decency"
When he decided not to go on election canvssing for his candidature.