BTW, DougR, it's because of the all-or-nothing system of casting electoral votes that "big states" have any advantage over "small states" at all. Your claim that "The Electoral College is a good idea because it enables votes from smaller states to carry the same weight as the larger populated states" is precisely the opposite of the truth. NY and California have huge populations, so if someone wins a landslide in both those states, they are very likely to win the election whether we have an electoral college or not.

But if there were no electoral college, each vote from NY would count exactly as much as each vote from Montana, and an election that split NY and California 51%-49% would be determined by votes from other states. As it is, because electoral votes from New York and California are cast by the "all-or-nothing" method, an election that splits NY and California 51%-49% is determined by...NY and California, just as if the person had won by a landslide.

The reason why the electoral college was supposed to balance out the power between big states and small states was because each state gets two "free" electoral votes regardless of size--a small state benefits proportionally much more from these extra votes. So, if a state has enough people for 30 congressional districts it gets 32 electoral votes, but if a state has only enough people for 2 congressional districts it gets 4 electoral votes. Obviously, the electoral votes per person ratio is higher for the small state, meaning that the small state's citizens have more power per person in the election.

BUT...this advantage to the small states is more than nullified by "all or nothing" electoral voting, which turns big states into unbeatable voting blocs even when the popular votes from these states are split evenly between the candidates. So the Big States have found a way to turn this supposedly small-state friendly institution to their advantage by using all-or-nothing electoral voting, because the constitution only mandates the existence of the college, not how it works. Neat, huh?