I did not mean to say it had to be JUST those three cities. But the Democratic vote is now concentrated in mostly large urban areas. If the electoral college was abolished, one would only have to campaign in said large urban areas to get to a majority vote to get elected. This would give Democrats the advantage since that is where their base is now. That is what the electoral college was meant to prevent. And it helped the prevention of of what Madison called in the Federalist Papers:
"a number of citizens whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
Simply put, it is a safe guard against mob rule.
1) That quote is more related to political parties and people dividing themselves into factions (it's kind of grey, parties weren't as strong back then). It has nothing to do with the electoral college, and everything to do with representative government vs direct democracy. Which, possibly could be related if we actually elected electors to vote for us, and not bind them to the popular vote directly. However electors are pretty much bound, and if the electors had defected from their state vote to prevent Trump from winning, I'd be upset with them.
(Unrelated to your point, Madison was wrong about party's longevity in Fed 10. Madison argued that as the country grew, parties wouldn't be able maintain their strength as there'd be too many specific/regional interests. Not that I blame him, just have to be mindful that founders got a lot wrong.)
2) I am glad you changed your claim from "Under NPV, Democratic urban concentration = one party totalitarian rule" to "Under NPV, Democratic urban concentration = Significant Democratic advantage". Which, I don't think is true anyway, but even my only effect is improving arguments, I'm happy.
3) You seem to be saying that in elections where you have a popular vote and the majority of people are urbanized, then you only need to campaign in those urban areas.
But that happens under EC.
Take a look at
this chart to see which states are relatively urban and which states are relatively rural.
So let's say that you believe that the electoral college incentivizes campaigning in rural states. Well let's test that theory. Look at the 10 most relatively rural states and cross reference it with the
campaigning map:
Maine got 3, which is pretty good. Because it was lucky enough to be somewhat of a swing state (and it splits their electoral votes) . Mississippi got 1. And of the other 8 states with relatively high rural populations (Vermont, Vest Virginia, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, North Dakota), they got
zero. So out of 399 events, the ten most rural states got only 4, or
one percent. This happened under EC, not NPV.
The combined population of those states is about 21 million. About 6.5% of the total population. They
should have gotten about 6 times more attention than they did.
Also, let's consider the states that
did get the most campaign attention. Let's not forget that the states have popular votes to decide their winner. So if your premise is that popular vote elections are dominated by urban/democrat interests if the population is urbanized, how did Pennsylvania go red when it has about a 79% urban population and the US has an 80% urban population? Or Florida with a
91% urban population?
Your premise does not function. Republicans still win urbanized states, and Republicans can still win urbanized national elections. And the electoral college does not promote rural voters, it promotes swing state voters.
4) Here's the basic point. The states that
do benefit from the EC are swing states. No doubt about it. So if you want to argue that the EC is better than NPV, you must argue why swing state voters deserve more relative power than non-swing state voters. Why don't Texans and Californians deserve presidential attention? Democrats in Texas and Republicans currently
do not matter under EC, but they would matter just as much as everyone else under NPV.
Why should some votes matter more than others?