Yes, it is "weird," and imho, we only do it that way because it is "set-in-stone" in the Constitution.
You may be interested to know that in many States, the State legislators (i.e., the Representatives and/or Senators who serve at your State capital, rather than in Washington) were once elected on a similar basis: a State was divided geographically (typically by county), and each county might have its own State Senator. This meant that, in terms of representation, one voter in a rural county held many, many times the voting power of a voter in an urban county.
That form of representation was challenged, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional.
See Baker v. Carr,
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=369&invol=186 This is the famous (for some of us) "one person, one vote" case. To give some perspective, according to my Fed Courts Professor, back when, this was the case identified by Chief Justice Earl Warren as the most significant of his tenure - keep in mind that his tenure also included the perhaps better-known decision
Brown v. Board of Education, which ordered the desegregation of public schools.
Anyway, that's probably more than you cared to know. I just hope someone found it interesting.
As for the current system, it is enshrined in the Constitution, and it will require a Constitutional Amendment to change it. Each election cycle, at least some people gripe about it; typically, those who expect their candidate may win the popular vote yet lose the electoral vote. (Those who expect the reverse can gloat, instead.) Imho, as long as everyone knows the rules - and plays by them - we have procedural fairness.
A partial fix to the problem, to at least make the electoral college more representative of the popular vote, would be to divide up each State's electoral votes according to its popular vote. That is a decision that can be made on a State-by-State basis, and some States have chosen to do so. (Regrets: I cannot name any off the top of my head.) The reasons this is not more popular are two-fold. First, whichever party has the
power to do this in a particular State has no
incentive to do so: they would be essentially giving electoral votes to the opposing party. (This is one of those "power corrupts" problems that disgusts me with both parties.) Second, a State that adopts this approach necessarily loses some influence in the national election. Think about how much Ohio, Florida, and other swing States have been courted by the candidates. Without the winner-take-all system in place most places, the candidates wouldn't have nearly the same incentive to court the voters there rather than the voters of, say, California or Texas.
My apologies for writing too darn much.
