The Maryland state legislature recently passed a bill that would assign Maryland’s electoral votes in the presidential election to the winner of the national popular vote.

The bill would become law only if states holding a majority of the nation’s

538 electoral votes were to adopt similar legislation.

The impetus for the Maryland bill is primarily twofold:

- A sentiment that the candidate who gets the most popular votes should win the election.

- To empower smaller states, which under the current system are largely ignored by candidates because these states lack the electoral votes of their larger brethren. Maryland has 10 such votes; Indiana has 11.

California has the most: 55.

This is an important issue, given the fact that in 2000 Al Gore had 543,000 more popular votes than George W. Bush but lost the election.

The Maryland plan has at least a few flaws, most notably the possibility that the state’s electoral votes would go to a candidate who didn’t actually win the popular vote in the state. And there’s also the likelihood that changing the presidential election to a popular vote would actually encourage candidates to spend less time — not more — in the nation’s smaller states.

But shouldn’t the office of president be decided by popular vote, the same way other elections are done in this country? Some will object because the Electoral College is the way it’s always been done. Such objections should never stand in the way of positive change.

The Founding Fathers had the following rationale for the Electoral College, which has been amended twice:

1. Four million inhabitants scattered across the country in the late 18th century would have no way of getting to know candidates from another part of the young country and therefore would be prone to voting for favorite local sons. This, they feared, would lead to votes for president being divided among many candidates with the winner attracting only a minority of the votes.

2. The political party system was inherently evil, and the popular vote would lead to political parties.

3. It would be ungentlemanly to campaign for public office, and campaigning would be necessary if the president were chosen by popular vote.

All three of these rationale for the Electoral College are outdated:

1. With the advent of communication technology — fast-reacting national wire services, radio, television, news Web sites — this is no longer a problem.

2. Some might say that the forefathers were correct about political parties. But this is the reality of how our political system has evolved.

3. These days, no “gentleman” — or person of any other nature — would win public office without campaigning.

Colloquial wisdom suggests “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

You could have argued up until 2000 that the system for electing our country’s president was not broken. That’s a difficult case to make now, and the plan adopted by Maryland, despite its flaws, is worth consideration in Indiana and across the country.