There's a lot about the Electoral College that rubs modern Americans the wrong way - assuming they know it's how we elect presidents and don't think it's an Ivy League school.

Harkening back to bewigged 18th century negotiators who didn't trust ordinary people to pick our top leaders by a simple majority vote, the Electoral College is seriously obsolete but hard to kill off via the cumbersome constitutional-amendment process. Four times in history - most recently in 2000 - the Electoral College system has delivered the presidency to the loser of the popular vote.

Now, a campaign is well under way to switch to a national popular vote in a novel way. In essence, the proposal wires around the Electoral College's flaws by enlisting enough states in a mutual compact to throw their electoral support to whoever wins the most popular votes in the nation as a whole.

Last month, Washington became the fifth state to agree to the new system. Its commitment will not become effective until enough other states sign on to bring the total to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Oregon's House passed a national popular vote bill in March. The measure is now pending in the Oregon Senate.

Impassioned supporters lay out all the arguments in a 716-page tome, Every Vote Equal: A state-Based Plan for Electing the President by National Popular Vote.

It seems to come down to being perfectly legal and sensible, if not necessarily quite as perfect as portrayed. It is easy, for example, to imagine Oregon voters strongly favoring one presidential candidate and being horrified to find our electoral votes going to the opponent favored elsewhere in the nation.

But that is how a popular vote ends up anyway - in theory, even a direct popular vote with absolutely no Electoral College could all come down to one vote in another state. We either trust democracy or we don't. This proposed new system gets us a lot closer to it.

Oregon senators should join the House in passing this legislation and sending it to the governor.