Like most US presidential elections, the Electoral College structure means that those states that are seen as already sure to assign their electoral votes (EV) to one or other of the two major presidential candidates tend to be ignored, with all the attention focused on the so-called battleground states where the outcome is uncertain. In this election, those states are seen as Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia. Mitt Romney is also throwing some money at Wisconsin since he hopes that since his running mate Paul Ryan is from that state, he might be able to nudge that from Democratic into battleground status.
Those nine states add up to 110 of the 535 electoral votes, or just 20% of the total. This means that roughly 80% of the nation’s votes will not be actively campaigned for. In addition to this being a disturbing distortion of democracy, this kind of campaigning increases the chances that what occurred in 2000, where one candidate received a nationwide majority of the popular vote while the other candidate got a majority in the Electoral College and thus became president, will increase. That is not good because it undermines the legitimacy of the result.
There have been calls for abolishing the Electoral College altogether but that would require a constitutional amendment.
There is an alternative strategy being pursued by some states that seems to bypass this need. Since each state is allowed to decide the basis by which it allocates its electoral votes, a group of them have formed what is called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact where they agree to allocate all their electoral college votes to whoever wins the national popular vote, irrespective of who won their own state.
If states with 270 or more EVs pass such a law, in effect, the winner of the popular vote will be President. Currently eight states (Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois, California, Washington, and Hawaii) plus D.C. have joined the compact. It is pending in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The compact only goes into effect when states with 270 EVs have signed up for it.
The states that have joined the NPVIC add up to 132 votes while the states where it is pending have 64.
You can be sure that if the 270 vote threshold is reached this compact will face a constitutional challenge on the basis of whether states can form such alliances and whether they can override the majority vote in their own states.