Ken Gordon wants popular vote to rule in national races.

Colorado could be in the forefront of an effort to effectively abolish the Electoral College if a bill sponsored by state Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, becomes law. Gordon's bill is part of a national movement to undo the role of the Electoral College, which became controversial in 2000 when Vice President Al Gore won a majority of the popular vote but still lost the election to George W. Bush in the Electoral College.

The plan would work like this: Colorado would enter into a compact with a number of other states, pledging that all its Electoral College delegates would vote for the winner of the national popular vote. The compact would take effect only if enough states signed on to have a majority in the Electoral College. The winner of the popular vote would be assured of election in the Electoral College.

The Electoral College was created by the framers of the Constitution as a way to protect the interests of smaller states. Under that system, the winner of the popular vote in each state gets all of the state's delegates to the Electoral College, which elects the president.

The Electoral College has been widely criticized as antidemocratic, but efforts to scrap it were thought to be doomed because small states would refuse to go along with changing the Constitution.

Under the current system, Gordon says presidential candidates are fixated on swing states such as Florida, Iowa, and Ohio, and ignore much of the rest of the country. Democrats skip over a state like Texas, while Republicans ignore California, assuming those state will be carried by the opposition.

Gordon says an election based purely on the popular vote would mean candidates would pay attention to every state. "This would make every state count equally," he said. "If you care about the presidential election and live in Texas, why vote? That's why the turnout is larger in the battleground states."

Gordon says the compact would benefit Colorado because Colorado has higher than average voter turnout, giving the state a larger share of the popular vote than the nine delegates we have in the Electoral College.

While Democrats were angered by the results of the 2000 election, Gordon says the same thing could have happened to Republicans in 2004.

"If 60,000 votes had switched in Ohio, Kerry would be president and Bush would have had three million more votes," said Gordon. Several Republicans have joined Gordon in co-sponsoring the measure, including Sen. John Evans, R-Parker, and Sen. Lew Entz, R-Hooper.

Gordon thinks the bill, which he introduced Tuesday and says is likely to be read across the desk today in the Senate, will pass the legislature. He said Gov. Bill Owens had agreed to talk with him about the proposal before taking a position.

Similar legislation has been introduced in Illinois, Louisiana, California, and Missouri.