My concern with eliminating the EV completely or adopting this idea is that candidates will only focus on highly populated areas, and states such as Iowa and New Hampshire will be ignored.
Mass democracies with an electorate almost as large as the American one which use a PV system for the election of the President have not had this issue.
Of course not, a vote is a vote, no matter where it's cast. I don't understand why EC supporters have convinced themselves of something that makes so little sense.
How many mass democracies use an FPTP system to elect their top leader? The answer is very few. Most use a parliamentary system to indirectly choose the prime minster of equivalent position. Those that directly elect their leader often use a runoff if no one gets a majority vote (eg. France).
Out of the ten largest countries in the world, Indonesia and Brazil use direct elections to choose their presidents and Nigeria and Russia use direct electoral-type events to choose theirs. Neither Indonesia nor Brazil have the problems suggested, although Hashemite could certainly tell you a good deal more about elections in Brazil than I can.