MONTPELIER, Vt.—Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed a bill Friday that would have added Vermont to a coalition of states seeking to elect the president and vice president via popular vote instead of the existing Electoral College system.

Saying it would decrease the influence of Vermont and other small states, Douglas returned the bill to the Legislature without his signature.

"The election of the president should be based on the decisions of each state," he said in a veto message to state Senate Secretary David Gibson. "If we retreat from this system, federalism -- the rights and influence of individual states -- will erode and move America closer to a single, centralized government where Vermont's values are drowned out by the voices and influence of more heavily populated areas."

The bill, which passed the House and Senate, sought to have Vermont join a national push by National Popular Vote Inc., an advocacy group based in Los Altos, Calif.

The group contends that the change would help avoid a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, when Democrat Al Gore got the most popular votes but Republican George W. Bush won a majority in the Electoral College and was elected president.

Under the Electoral College system, states get one electoral vote for each member of their congressional delegation. Maine and Nebraska award electoral votes by congressional district, but other states award them on a winner-take-all basis.

The popular vote plan would have states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, so that if most of the electoral votes were awarded that way, the popular vote winner would be guaranteed to win the White House.

Four states -- Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey and Maryland -- have endorsed the plan.

Vermont didn't.

"I am not willing to cede Vermont's voice in the election, and ultimately in the operations of our federal government, to the influence and interests of larger states that would most assuredly prevail in all but the rarest occasions," said Douglas, who is a Republican.

"This is precisely the imbalance the framers of our U.S. Constitution sought to avoid," he wrote.

State Sen. James Condos, who co-sponsored the bill in Vermont, says the big state-small state argument is a red herring. A measure that strengthens the election process and increases the integrity of presidential elections is worth trying, he said.

"Whoever has the most votes wins, that's the most simple answer," said Condos, D-Chittenden. "That's how we elect every other position in local and state governments across the country. Why not have the president of the United States elected that way as well?"

Common Cause and the Vermont Public Interest Research Group also supported the bill, and the change.

John Koza, chairman of National Popular Vote, said he hopes Vermont will change its mind in the future. He said the group hopes to gather the necessary support in time for the 2012 election.

"The governor has it exactly backward, because it's the big battleground states that are empowered and get most of the attention from the presidential candidates and the smaller states are almost unanimously non-competitive in the presidential election process," he said.