Analyse the weaknesses of the electoral college?

Although it can be argued that the Electoral College protects the voice of small population states, preventing places such as Wyoming from having their votes swept aside by giants such as Texas and California, it can be argued that the system is highly under representative to voters within large states. With each state in the US being guaranteed 3 EC votes, small population states are overrepresented, an example being Alaska holding 3 EC votes when its population size should only allocate it 1.5. The fact that California receives one Electoral College vote for every 710,000 people while Alaska gets one for every 190,000 highlights this disparity. The inability for the Electoral college system to weigh votes fairly prevents individual citizens within states such as Texas from influencing where there EC votes are given, and therefore it can be argued that through trying to preserve the voice of the smaller states, the current EC system is under-representing thousands of peoples views.
It is also said that the ‘winner takes all’ system used in the EC distorts the results, for example in 2012 Obama’s 51% popular vote translated into a 62% electoral college vote, meaning he was overrepresented, the exaggeration of the winning margin gives the winner an artificially strong mandate. The distortion is further seen in the 2000 and 2016 elections, where the winner of the popular vote didn’t win the Electoral vote. In 2016, Clinton won the popular vote to Trump by 48% to 46%, yet Trump still managed to hold a comfortable win in the Electoral college. This ability for the popular vote to be undermined by the Electoral College system means that the popular opinion isn’t taken into full account, and that through its non-binding nature and ‘rogue’ electors, the popular vote can be undermined by the individual electoral college voters.  However, it can be argued that the EC, in its ability to promote a ‘two horse race’ creates a strong mandate for the winning candidate. Through its ability to exaggerate the vote, it can translate the POTUS’s mandate into one which will allow him to claim legitimacy which he needs to govern, his mandate will be clear and strong.
Another argued weakness of the Electoral College system is that it creates overly powerful swing states and states considered to be ‘reliable’ are ignored by candidates. Romney said that “all the money will be spent in 10 states’, and this is largely true with all the money and TV advertising centralising in 10 states. To further this, 99.6% Obamas and 99.9% Romney’s campaign funds went into these 10 states. Voters in non-swing states also have less access to political campaigns and candidates, as candidates rarely take time to visit states who are considered ‘safe seats’ , for example California (considered a blue state) is rarely visited by the democrat candidate. In fact, 38 states have had no visits in recent elections due to their dependable voting outcomes . The effect of this is that multiple voters across America do not have equal participation within the presidential election, as they are not so exposed to the campaigning or the target of candidates manifesto. This concept of ‘safe’ states may also lead to a decline in participation, for if a voter votes Democrat in a republican state such as Texas, their vote will have little to no impact and therefore they may be less inclined to participate in a system where their vote is wasted.
It is also said that the Electoral College is unfair to national third parties. Since 1980, third party candidates have won significant amounts of the popular vote, for example in 2000 Ralph Nader won over 3 million votes yet did not win a single Electoral college vote. Votes are not concentrated enough for 3rd party candidates to get plurality and therefore they , even though they gain significant popular support, are unable to influence the presidential selection process in any meaningful way. On the other hand, it can be argued that a system which favours a 2 horse race is preferential, as allowing 3rd party candidates to influence vote would weaken the eventual winning candidate’s mandate. For example Perot’s 19% popular vote in 1992 wouldn’t have been able to provide a 19% presidency, so these votes are arguably wasted as they take votes away from other, stronger candidates, Perot took votes away from Clinton’s benefit in 1992.