Mark,

>Your absolutely correct. The electoral college does give more weight to voters in small states as the number of electors equals the number of seats held by that state in the US senate (always 2) + the number of House reps. If the president were elected by popular vote then presidential hopefuls would have little reason to be concerned with issues that affect smaller states. As it is, the bigger states still have a large advantage even with the electoral college, going to a popular vote would allow candidates to campaign only in NY, CA, TX & Florida.

I believe that the "favor the small states" angle was part of the compromise during the Constitutional Convention, but I'm not commenting on whether or not I support that.

My point was simply that you would not have the same number of voters or the same distribution of votes if the election had been run under a popular vote system. Therefore, the popular vote number means nothing in this election.