Well, that is what I tried to get a straight answer to...and got a rather snarky return.
The best I can tell is this:
The compact is that lets say Candidate Smith gets more popular votes than anyone else. All of the states in the compact award their electoral college votes to Candidate Smith whether or not Candidate Smith got a single vote in their state. Meaning that if Washington, Oregon and California have 10 electoral votes each and Candidate Smith never campaigned in or got a single vote in WA, OR, CA, Smith would get 30 electoral votes.
That seems bizarre to me.
Also what people either ignore or simply haven't thought about is this; whatever system we have...it has to work in all conditions. There shouldn't be all of this legal wrangling that goes on after an election. The rules have to account for every possibility.
Lets say we have 3 candidates, Larry, Moe and Curly. Larry gets 35% of the vote and Moe and Curly each get 32.5%...do you really want someone whom more than 4 out of 10 Americans didn't vote for to be the President? If you add Chimp into the mix...Larry would probably get less than 35%. Seems like a bad idea to me.
We already have a problem brewing--a big one--that nobody is discussing much. The rural areas are shrinking in population and the urban areas are growing. The problem is that our constitution ensures that every state gets 2 senators. Soon about 66 of the senators will be representing something like 30% of the nation. Ignore, if you can, the racial issus that this will bring up...2/3 of the Senate representing a population that is something like 99% white....gridlock is going to become the new norm (if it hasn't already). The only way to really break gridlock is to have a leader who can push an agenda....try doing that with 35% popular support.
The census likely will mean more political representation for urban residents.
www2.pewtrusts.org