Some eloquent defenses of the Electoral College exist, but most of them in this day and age come across as elaborate rationalizations.

When people find out how the system actually works, they are surprised, if not shocked.

And most Americans got a crash course in how the system actually works in 2000, when after more than a month of wrangling George W. Bush won the presidency via the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

It almost happened again in 2004, when Bush won the popular vote by about 3 million, but could have lost in the Electoral College if 60,000 more Ohioans had voted for John Kerry.

Much election reform has occurred since then, including cleaning up many mechanical irregularities and inconsistencies in the voting system. The Help America Vote Act is the primary manifestation of that effort. For the most part HAVA has been a success.

But that pesky Electoral College, written into the original Constitution, remains as a clumsy memorial to the founders' belief that they had to protect the landed aristocracy from the hazards of majority rule.

Amending the Constitution to do away with the Electoral College would be extremely difficult, but now a movement called National Popular Vote has a plan to circumvent it — to drop out of the college, so to speak.

Forty-eight state legislatures are considering the National Popular Vote Act, a proposal under which states would agree to bypass the Electoral College system by awarding their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote.

It's a clever operation that is gaining some momentum. Colorado's Senate already has passed it, and Montana's is considering it.

Senate Bill 290 by Sen. Rick Laible, R-Darby, was discussed Wednesday by the State Administration Committee.

In addition to promoting the one person-one vote rule, the measure aims to curb the present system in which presidential campaigns can focus on just a handful of "swing" states, effectively disenfranchising voters everywhere else — including Montana.

We hope the Senate panel will pass SB290 on to the floor because we'd like to see further discussion of this very interesting idea.