Two changes would happen. A lot of people who don't vote today because their state either heavily favours the 'wrong' candidate or the 'right' candidate will already win by a massive margin, would start voting, since all of sudden their vote matters a lot more.

Secondly, and more importantly, candidates would campaign very differently. In todays system gaining 1-2 percentage points in swing states like Arizona, Georgia or North Carolina is worth infinitely more than gaining 5 percentage point in California, New York or Massachusetts, and politicians on both sides campaign accordingly. In a popular vote scenario those extra 5 points in California could swing the election which would change the entire focus of not only the campaign, but possibly even the type of policy and even candidates that the parties put forwards.

Already a big issue that big cities vote one way while rural voters go another way.

It's not right that a voter in Maine or New Hampshire, which have 1.3 million people and are roughly even between the two major parties, has a high probability of changing the outcome with their vote, while a voter in California or Texas - which have 30 times as many people - is essentially irrelevant to the outcome.

Maybe it's hard to imagine the United States of American to become 50 independent countries but isn't the way you keep them united is by promising the smaller ones that they won't be trampled on by the big ones?

Yes, but in the US, at least, it's gotten to the absurd opposite where the minority is more or less assured a majority of votes. In order to avoid tyranny of the majority, we've more or less codified tyranny of the minority.

It would be more helpful to describe what a state of affairs looks like that doesn't result in large population states, who already maintain the gift/grift of cultural hegemony, running the country.

To take a step back, I've lived in both rural areas and major cities (I currently live in one). Rural folks being represented in government is not an issue and I find it kind of odd that people try to make it an issue like this. I'm fine having my agenda compete with theirs.

there were no metropolis like we have them today back then. City were considered gigantic with with only a few hundred thousand people -- which is maybe a largish town nowadays

Nobody said that rural people being represented is an issue, its nonetheless a fact that they're overrepresented, as they have disproportionate voting power. That term doesn't mean that they shouldn't be represented, it means that they have proportionally more voting power then a person living in a city does.

You spoke so certainly about the subject that that was not apparent. Maybe it should have been a question instead?

> there were no metropolis like we have them today back then

In the US there were, and the early development of the US is the reason for the electoral college. You had sprawling cities like NYC having to vote next to people who took months to get to the East coast for voting. Their problems were very different and the electoral college helped balance the concerns of cities that have easy access to imports and labor with areas that had no such things. On the larger scale it helped protect smaller states and territories from the policy and influence of larger states and territories. Again, their problems are very different, and in current day translate to what we end up referring to as urban, suburban, and rural.

> Nobody said that rural people being represented is an issue, its nonetheless a fact that they're overrepresented,

In the US they're not and you still haven't answered my original question, which is how are they overrepresented. You're just stating that's a fact, but it's really not.

Thats why I'm stating it as a fact,as it sounds like very simple logical connection. It could be a misunderstanding on my part, but it always sounded like a very straightforward situation to me.

There's lots of issues in the US to solve. Voting, imo, is just the pet issue of the losing party.

Every form of democracy is flawed, and it's important to be aware of them. Otherwise things tend to kinda spiral out of control, which they arguably already have in a lot of western nations with wanton corruption and completely insane people getting elected.

If you spread 49.9% of the population evenly in a system where states vote rather than individuals, you've insured that this minority gets no representation.

What election are you referring to where the Germans democratically gave Hitler power? His best "fair" election results saw his party get ~35% of the vote, and he only got the largely ceremonial chancellorship through backdoor deals. By the time he became president nobody could consider the elections fair.

[0] Which is also a problem. You know how everyone says the EU is undemocratic? It's for the same reason why we have an Electoral College - the whole "federal government represents states instead of people" thing.

The grass sure is greener on every other side.

States are abstract political entities; it's people who matter.

People are represented in the House by population (less so than they should be since we refuse to let the lower chamber grow in size) and in the Senate by state.

The President of the United States represents every United States citizen everywhere on the planet. The holder of that office should be elected by a majority, preferably with some form of expression of ranking preference, of those voters regardless of what political entity they are currently in or connected to.

Many people don’t vote at all because their preferred president has a 0% chance of winning their state and the vast majority of states are winner-take all with the electoral votes

The point is that you can't possibly know how all those interactions among voters would play out if you did in fact update the rules

That's clearly true, in addition to the obvious fact that campaigning would change dramatically. The OP's point however was that we don't know the extent to which it's true.

An obvious example of people making a different vote would be in California - I know more than one Republican who either didn't vote or voted for a 3rd party 'statement' candidate for president because they knew that all of the electoral votes in CA were going to the Democrat anyway.

Undoubtedly the same thing happens with Democrats in TX or TN or wherever Republicans hold a huge majority and Electors are winner-take-all.