PROVIDENCE - Sen. Daniel Issa would like to see Rhode Island effectively drop out of the Electoral College and join a movement to elect the president of the United States by popular vote.

Issa, whose district includes parts of Central Falls, Cumberland and Pawtucket, says the Electoral College, where residents of the various states choose electors who officially cast the ballots for president and vice president, violates the tradition of "one-man, one-vote" and can result in a situation where the popular vote is overridden, as it was in 2000, when Al Gore outpolled George W. Bush in the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. Likewise, he said, Bush nearly lost the presidential election to John Kerry in 2004 even though he outpolled him by nearly 3 million votes.

"It's supposed to be majority rule," Issa told The Times.

The major shortcoming of the current Electoral College system, Issa said, is that voters in about two-thirds of the states are arguably disenfranchised in presidential elections because they do not live in the closely divided "battleground" states. Under the existing winner-take-all rule for electoral votes in most states, presidential candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize or campaign in states that they cannot win.

Heavily Democratic Rhode Island is one of those non-competitive states.

There is also concern that the Electoral College discourages turnout because voters in two-thirds of the nation know well before Election Day who will win their state and get all the electoral votes.

That winner-take-all electoral vote mentality also discriminates by weighing presidential votes unevenly (a Wyoming voter, for instance, has about four times as much impact on choosing that state's electors as does a California voter in that more populated state).

The Central Falls Democrat has introduced legislation to have Rhode Island join the National Popular Vote plan, an interstate compact that will allow states to commit to casting their electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote.

"The Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote," would become binding when states representing a majority of the Electoral College - 270 votes - sign on. It will ensure, Issa said, that any candidate who wins the popular vote will be sure to win the White House.

"The move to a national popular vote is nothing new," he noted, "but the last few presidential elections have truly raised the concerns of many people across the country about the validity and integrity of the current election process."

"The current method of electing our president empowers some citizens in some states at the expense of others," he said. "The National Popular Vote plan would be much more democratic, and equitable, than the current practice."

"The goal is making every vote matter the same, from one end of our nation to the other," Issa said. "This is not a partisan issue, it is an equality issue. A vote in Rhode Island should be as important as a vote in any other state. And the person elected to lead our nation should be elected by all those votes, not some little-understood Electoral College machinations."