HELENA – Montana should join a national movement to bypass the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote, a Darby senator told lawmakers Wednesday.

Republican Sen. Rick Laible and other supporters said the change would make Montana and other sparsely populated states more of a factor in presidential races and could increase voter turnout.

"This affirms what we all hear, which is one man, one woman, one vote," Laible told the Senate State Administration Committee. "The electoral voting system doesn't allow that."

Lawmakers in 47 other states are sponsoring similar legislation, and the Colorado Senate approved its version of the law last week, said Barry Fadem, co-founder of the California-based National Popular Vote project coordinating the movement.

The bill would change state law to award Montana's three electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote nationally. It would take effect only if enough states joined in to make it work, Fadem said.

Currently, voters do not directly cast their ballots for a presidential candidate. Instead, under a system created by the founding fathers out of a fear of mob rule, they choose slates of "electors," who in most cases are expected to cast their ballots for the candidate who wins the popular vote in their state.

Each state has one elector for every member it has in the House and Senate.

Backers say the movement is aimed at preventing a repeat of 2000, when Democrat Al Gore lost despite getting more votes than George W. Bush.

The current system, Fadem said, encourages parties to focus on a few contested "battleground" states – such as Florida and Ohio in recent years – and ignore states like Montana with fewer electoral votes.

"Basically the message is 'You are not relevant,'" he said.

Other attempts to change the Electoral College system have failed, most of them aimed at amending the Constitution, a drawn-out process that requires approval by Congress and ratification by at least 38 states.

The current proposal would be accomplished instead through an agreement among the states.

Similar bills were introduced last year in Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York and California, where the Legislature approved the measure only to have Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger veto it.

No one testified against the bill introduced Wednesday, and the committee took no immediate action on it.

– The bill is Senate Bill 290.

On the Net

Electoral College: http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/index.html