What are some of the challenges associated with creating a truly "fair" procedure for electing a president of the United States? Are any of these obstacles specific to this country?

The problem with the Electoral College is not the faithless electors who vote for whomever they please, which is the focus of Mr. Wegman’s piece. Instead, it is that the plurality winner, except in two states (Maine and Nebraska), wins all a state’s electoral votes in presidential elections. If electoral votes were awarded to candidates in proportion to the popular votes they receive in a state, the victories of the Republican candidates in 2000 and 2016, both of whom lost the national popular vote, probably would have been reversed.

because the vietnam war was fought in an especially brutal and untraditional way

someone or something lol