The votes that count in a presidential election are the Electoral College votes. Citizen votes are considered recommendation to the Electoral College. Vermont uses “winner-take-all,” so they haven’t cast a single vote for a Republican presidential candidate in over 30 years.
I don’t like the system myself. If you don’t either, there’s something you can do about it. If your state hasn’t signed the National Popular Vote bill, write your state legislators and ask them to sign, and encourage others to do the same.
Wow, this is actually a very clever piece of legislation. I'd personally take this a step further and enstate a 2 round system, so that votes for 3rd party candidates don't get wasted. Although I'm not sure that could get implemented in this way.
It might be able to, but I think it would be a lot more complicated. The popular vote compact doesn't require any changes to how elections are held, only to how the electors vote afterwards.
Coordinating getting those changes made in a compatible fashion across states would be a very daunting task.