This seems kind of stupid to me:

The measure would award Maryland’s 10 electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. The plan would only take effect if states representing a majority of the nation’s 538 electoral votes decided to make the same change.

State Sen. Jamie Raskin, a law professor and sponsor of the idea, said Maryland is largely ignored by presidential candidates during campaigns, because they assume the Democratic state will vote for the Democratic candidate.

OK, I can understand the misguided desire to have the president be elected by popular vote. I disagree with it, as did the Founders, who wanted us to be a Republic, and ensure that the smaller states had a more level playing field when it came to electing a president. I can even agree that it’s probably constitutional, albeit dumb, since the legislature can use any method it wants to award its state’s electoral votes. But I don’t understand why Senator Raskin imagines that making Maryland’s electoral votes dependent on the national popular vote will make politicians pay more attention to Maryland’s voters.

It seems to me that if you’re going to get Maryland’s (and other states’) electoral votes regardless of how you do in Maryland, and only need to get a national majority, you’ll put all your resources in the most cost-effective media markets in the major cities. Now it might be that this means that you’ll target Baltimore-Washington, because it’s a fairly dense area, but there’s nothing intrinsic about this plan that would make politicians pay more attention to the state of Maryland per se. And of course, it would screw over Wyomingites, who would be essentially disenfranchised if they followed such a strategy (and perhaps even if not, since the methodology would be skewed even if they didn’t sign on).

Is there someone out there who can get into a (presumably) liberal law professor’s mind and explain this to me?