Secretary of State Kris Kobach testified against a bill that would add Kansas to a group of states advocating to elect the president by national popular vote.

Kobach cited Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson in rebutting the testimony of Laura Brod, a former state representative from Minnesota who is now a spokeswoman for the group Support Popular Vote.

"There's a lot at stake here and I don't think Kansas should travel down this path," Kobach said.

Brod's group is not proposing to do away with the Electoral College, but rather to form an agreement among the states that their electoral votes will go to the national popular vote winner.

The agreement would only be triggered if enough states sign it to reach 270 electoral votes — the number required to win the presidency. Brod testified that nine states comprising 132 electoral votes have already signed it and 12 other states have passed it in at least one chamber of government.

Brod said the measure would force presidential candidates to campaign in every state, whereas lately they've focused 98 percent of their campaign spending on 15 battleground states. She also said it would ensure that the will of the people prevails, noting that in five of 56 presidential elections, the popular vote winner has lost.

"The bill is seeing a lot of traction across the country in red states and blue states, big states and small states," said Brod, a Republican.

But Kobach, also a Republican, said Kansas would be a loser in Brod's plan because, as a relatively low-population state, the electoral votes from its two senators carry more weight than those in other states.

He also said that Hamilton advised a dispersed electoral system to mitigate the influence of corruption and that is still a valid concern today.

"The corruption we're most likely to see today in the 21st century is probably some form of organized election fraud, or voter fraud," Kobach said.

Kobach said that under Brod's plan, the voter ID measures he's spearheaded in Kansas could be offset by those committing fraud in states with more lenient laws.

But Brod argued that electing by national popular vote would actually make fraud less effective, because the current system allows fraudsters to concentrate their efforts on hotly-contested counties in battleground states where a few votes can turn an entire national election. She cited Summit County, Ohio, as an example.

She also said the small-state advantage is a misconception because the "winner-take-all" nature of the current Electoral College system steers candidates toward campaigning in battleground states with large populations.

Kobach closed the hearing by testifying that Brod's plan would lead to lawsuits because entering into an interstate contract without Congressional approval violates the Constitution's Compact Clause.

Brod disagreed with that after the hearing, saying that as she understood it, elections were the purview of state governments. But she said about 70 percent of Americans are behind the national popular vote movement, so Congressional approval would not be difficult.

"If we need that, we'll go get it," she said.

The Senate Ethics and Elections Committee took no action on the proposal, but did pass a bill introduced by Sen. Vicki Schmidt that would require candidates for state office to disclose what radio and TV ads they sponsor.