a few states here control most of the power here due to the electoral college

Yes I'm indeed aware of that. It's a way of electiong representatives and it has a lot of implications (most notably the two party system), good and bad. Doesn't really change things though it's just a different (and weird) way to do democracy

And everything down to state and local initiatives gets lobbied into the ground by special interests.

Yeah, I have nothing to say about that. It really seems like a big pain but I'm having a really hard time imagining what it's like since we don't have that much lobbying here in Sweden, it feels really absurd for me.