Ability to affect is not the same thing as a direct vote.

Regardless of the recount in Florida or anything like that, Gore won the popular vote in 2000. Had there been no electoral college there would have been no need for a recount and Gore would be president.

Personally I think the electoral college is an antiquated system which is a relic from the days of the pony express when there was no way to quickly send information from one end of the country to the other.

The argument for it is that it maintains states' rights; but personally since it's a Federal office it doesn't make much sense to rejigger the popular vote.

The electoral college effectively causes campaigns to totally ignore certain states because they know the state is either historically Democrat or Republican so there is no need to try and shift the balance. In Wisconsin, which is a swing state, I've been seeing Bush campaign ads since the Democratic primary, and Kerry ads since he got the presumptive nomination. While I was home in Maryland over the summer, which traditionally votes for a Democrat president, I didn't see a single campaign ad. Now that I'm back in wisconsin I'm totally inundated as the election is now only a month away.

But we're stuck with it, since Republicans will cling to outmoded ideals of states' rights even in situations where the states don't really need to have any say. For a federal office it would be far more useful to have a direct vote, and I'd say the same thing if a Republican had benefitted from the change.