The electoral college determines who becomes president and the president has the overt power to veto bills and the more subtle ability to influence the government's agenda.
The number of electoral votes a state has is also equal to the number of representatives that they send to congress. So the unbalanced distribution of electors also reflects an unbalanced distribution of representatives.
President can veto laws. President has the bully pulpit and gets things on and off the agenda. Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in.
I'm not endorsing GP's point, but the electoral college is massively important to legislation.
> Twice in my lifetime has the candidate who won the popular vote lost the presidency, with massive ramifications for the country I live in.
I see this repeated often, and I need to say it's bullshit.
The rules of presidential elections are known to the general public, which affects voters behavior, i.e. Republican voters in California might not even bother voting, since they stand no chance of affecting the results. Similar thing can be said about Democrats in Florida. There are even names for this: "blue states", "red states", "swing states".
Until you actually hold the elections with different rules the claim of "winning the popular vote" is meaningless.
EDIT: to clarify - the current system means that some votes matter more than others: a single Republican vote in a swing state matters more than a single Republican vote in blue state. People behave accordingly, i.e. voter turnout is higher in swing states.
