Total hogwash!
Without the Electoral College system, which thankfully is one part of the Constitution that still survives, the election would be fought solely in a few large metro areas, which means even a more leftward drift in national politics.
With the Electoral College and the party alignment as it stands today, each candidate had about equal numbers of electoral votes conceded to the other. The relatively few states not included in those categories were the battleground states which either candidate could have won and both targeted. Neither party at present has a lock on the Electoral College majority, but massive cheating by one side turns a fair contest into a fix. It's not a problem of the Electoral College, it's the fault of the sleaziness and criminality of the 'Rats, as this thread demonstrates.
With popular vote you bring up the possibility of effective national advertising with a positive message (a message Obama did not have). Voter suppression ads can be targeted to specific markets. I can’t help but believe that Romney could have pulled more votes from blue states had he only tried.