Um.
Didn't you just say that California and New York lost their "voice in the process?"
No, I sure didn't.
If so then how did ALL 50 states have a voice?
By keeping elections within the state, each state decides the preference of their own voters. New York voters have no impact on the election in Florida. That is the brilliance of the EC.
Also, I'm not sure how you reconcile the difference between a state's "voice" being weighted by population, and it being weighted by the number of representatives (a function of population) + senators = electoral votes.
The voice should be weighted. However, the weighting does not silence the smaller states, Your complaint here demonstrates that. Even though more democrats in California and New York wanted Gore in 2000, Florida was the swing state, because their election was independent. The greater population of the other states did not drown out the votes of Florida.
At any rate, I'm not debating the electoral college's merits, I'm merely using it as an example of a buffer placed between "the people" and their representative government. This buffer has grown, while other definitions of "the people" have changed.
Because of such obsolescence grass roots movements become more popular, and established partisans that have fed from the status quo become more defensive.
Except that it isn't a buffer, but instead the safeguard to the voice of the people.
What people?
Not Californians or New Yorkers. 500 or so Floridan's upset the popular vote of the entire nation and you call that a, "safeguard to the voice of the people?"
Nonsense.
The electoral college was, is, and will be an absurd anachronistic nod to the semi-aristocracy that could never conceive of giving ignorant peasants complete control over the choice of Executive leadership. In the day, it was probably a wise decision. Continuing the practice only maintains the lack of trust between government and "the people."