Author is completely wasting her time going down this road. Smaller states would never agree to give up the disproportionate amount of power the constitution provides them. A complete non-starter.
We know how it would work out . . . it's spelled C-A-N-A-D-A, where 90% of the time, greater Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal tell the other 900 million square miles who's going to run the country.
You're right. The change we need to make is to stop the popular election of Senators. We must return to the original method of the State Legislatures electing them.
“a group of states would agree to award their state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who carried their state.”
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That is a terrible idea. I say the states should cast their electoral votes in their states interest, not in the interest of everyone else. People who want the popular vote to win all of the time, want tyranny of the majority.
In first half of the 19th century a few legislatures chose the electors themselves without a popular vote. In other states they were popularly selected by the citizens, but they were supposed to choose wise/esteemed men whose judgement they trusted. When the Electoral College voted, it was much like the College of Cardinals where the electors debated the needs of the country and then each elector chose the person whom he thought had the best qualities to lead the country. The reasoning behind the electoral college was that no branch should be elected the same way because the founders thought that the best way to keep the branches separate was to make them represent different interests. If two branches of government represent only one interest then you will have tyranny of bare majority. The House was elected popularly, the Senate by the States, the President was not directly chosen by either but rather by the Electoral College. In this manner no one group could completely monopolize power and this would thus prevent tyranny by any single segment of society.