Is there any other way to interpret this? Maryland could vote, overwhelmingly, to support candidate X and then have all of its electoral votes cast for candidate Y. In fact, candidate Y could elect to not even appear on the Maryland ballot, get 0 popular votes in Maryland, and still get Maryland's electoral votes.
I know that the Electoral College gets kicked around a lot but a direct, popular vote for president would meant that Arkansas, Montana, Maine, New Mexico, and places like that would never see a presidential television ad much less a candidate in the flesh. Why would you spend campaign dollars anywhere except California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Florida?
The Founders envisioned presidential politics as a matter of regionalism and fully expected most presidential elections to be determined in the House of Representatives with states casting electoral votes for favorite sons on a regular basis. Modern, mass communication has pretty much ended regionalism as an overt force in American politics but it still remains powerful.; you can't win without Nixon's Southern Strategy. For good or for ill, the South votes for its own and those it perceives to be its own at the expense of those who really are its own (see November 2000).
My idea of an ideal way of apportioning electoral votes is that one vote should go to the winner of the majority of the votes from each Congressional district and the other two should go to whoever carries the state overall. The majors don't like this plan because it would force them to spend money in more media markets. If LA gets you just as many votes as Jonesboro, Arkansas you've got a lot of decisions to make. Perhaps it would result in less money being spent all 'way 'round and then there wouldn't be the need to raise so much and the people might actually have a chance to elect the right man for the job. Like, oh, say, Dennis Kucinich.
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