It's all about what kinds of questions get discussed and addressed during campaigns. The point of the campaigning process is chiefly to elect new representatio

It's all about what kinds of questions get discussed and addressed during campaigns. The point of the campaigning process is chiefly to elect new representation, but secondarily (and closely so) to debate and test competing theories on the primary problems of the time. In the electoral college model, the concerns of the swing states get the most attention, for reasons which are far too numerous and obvious to go in to. This is unfair to people that don't live in the swing states. In the popular model, it's a bit subtle. At first, you think "well everyone's vote counts equally so everyone's concerns get counted according to the proportion of the constituents with those concerns." But this is not correct when you get down to the details. If you're a candidate, you have to spend your resources in the most efficient way possible. Politicians do this (spend resources) by paying for messaging, spending their time campaigning in person and with volunteers/staffers, and by adopting policy positions (this is a resource in the political landscape). In the electoral college model, the best return on your time, money, and issue consideration is found in the swing states, because everywhere else you have basically zero probability of success, which cannot be balanced out by any weight that electoral votes afford. In the popular model, the best return is to target the largest population possible. People get divvied up into geographical regions no matter what---be it by local news network, regional speaking venue, or major political issue---and it's to these regions that our votes then become divided. In the popular model, the only places worth considering are those places with the largest populations, that still stand a chance of being easy to target with a single message, TV ad, or speaking appearance. If you're in a rural town, a candidate coming to speak to you only gets to speak to you, not to the nearest million voters. But in a city, the candidate that comes to you does get an audience of a million or more. So in the popular model, candidates will only bother to work for the concerns of those who live in population centers. You get skewed either way. Personally, I think skewing toward regions with lots of people, even if they may not be the overall majority, is the best thing to do, but that's just my opinion, I don't have an optimal solution. The problem is that "optimal" means that everyone's concerns get addressed in an equal manner, not necessarily that everyone gets an equivalent vote. The game theory involved is subtle and the emotions on all sides even more so.