You say...

Popular Vote, I say Electoral College. You say poe-tay-toe, I say po-tah-toe, let's call the whole thing off.

Question

Why would people in small states like North Dakota and Montana want to change the current election policies to a system that would completely strip them of any ability to effect the outcome of a presidential election?

That's a bit rhetorical.

The legislation has been championed by a group called National Popular Vote. Their main premise is that they want to make it law in each of the 50 states that the Electors in the Electoral College are bound to vote in accordance with the national popular vote even if the candidate did not win the state from which the Electors came.

It sounds like its all about direct democracy, blah blah blah... but they forget the original intent of the Constitution's writers was to provide for a power sharing system between the States and the national government. Under this group's proposal, small states will be swept aside and presidents will only need to campaign in large cities/populated areas and they will never visit states like Iowa, Kansas, etc...

There are so many other pressing issues to worry about in this country and we have a large group of state and national legislators wasting time on promoting a system that will disenfranchise more than half of the country.

I am sure I will be writing more on this in the future.