Reality is, the winner now does NOT need to accumulate the assent from “more of the country”, not just the places with the “most votes”.
With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
“With the current state-by-state winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes, it could only take winning a bare plurality of popular votes in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, for a candidate to win the Presidency — that is, a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.”
The fact is that with a “national popular vote” election, a candidate could win outright majorities in the “11 most populous states”, and not get a majority in any of the other 39 states, and still win the election; making the “popular vote” winner an actual choice of only 22% of the nation - by jurisdiction.
As I said, while you keep harping on the “winner take all” allocation of the electoral votes, there is a remedy to that that does not change the electoral college system or make a legislative attempt at an end-run around the constitution, and that remedy is not the “national popular vote” but for states to vote to change the allocation of their electoral votes to a proportional allocation among the candidates, in accordance with the districts in which they did obtain majorities.
And guess what, not only would that be fair, and resolve your complaint about “winner take all” allocations of the electoral votes, but the results of the last eight presidential elections would not have been changed either, becuase low-and-behold the winner of the electoral vote DID obtain a majority of the votea in a majority of counties across the country - a fact that mirrors obtaining a majiorty of the votes in a majority of the local districts.
Though local districts do vary in size, and in population accross the country, a winning majority of those juridictions is a vastly greater represenation of a majority “of the nation” than any “national popular vote” could ever be.