From this article in his magazine. "Dumb, Destructive Move":
Uniting the Nation The virtues of the Electoral College are enormous. Candidates are forced to wage national campaigns. They have to win an outright majority of electoral votes to capture the White House. Contenders with narrow sectional, racial or ideological appeal thus have no chance of triumphing. The Electoral College thus tamps down divisions instead of inflaming them. It pushes serious candidates to bring diverse groups together. Yet while encouraging candidates to put together national efforts in order to win, the College also compels them to pay attention to local issues they might otherwise ignore. In so-called battleground states candidates quickly learn what's on the minds of voters. The system, in short, keeps wannabe national leaders more closely attuned to grassroots sentiments. A direct popular vote, by contrast, would inflame rather than ameliorate divisions. Candidacies would proliferate for the general election. Our 175,000 election districts would also require immense policing to ensure legitimacy. After all, in several recent presidential elections the change in a few votes in each district would have swung the elections the other way. Formally abolishing the Electoral College would involve a Constitutional Amendment, which would require the approval of three-fourths of the states. Most small and a goodly number of midsize states wouldn't want to see their relative power diluted, so such an amendment would have little chance of ratification. The California-Colorado method is a way to get around this formidable barrier. Why get rid of a system that helps hold the country together to replace it with one that would balkanize it?