As the nation braces for a long and numbing presidential election, the State of Maryland has done voters a favor by rejecting the Electoral College as a fossil in need of a democratic makeover. Gov. Martin O�Malley and the Annapolis legislature made the state the first in the nation to decide that its Electoral College members should someday be required to vote for the presidential candidate chosen by a plurality of the nation�s voters, not according to the state�s parochial tally.

The change would not take effect until it won final acceptance by enough states to amount to a 270-vote majority in the college. (Maryland has 10 votes.) But it is something all Americans would benefit from, particularly the masses of voters routinely ignored when candidates focus on a few battleground states � just 16 in 2004 � that increasingly settle modern campaigns.

The need to scrap the creaky college machinery was made clear in the angst of the 2000 election. George W. Bush lost the popular election by almost 544,000 votes, yet won in a Supreme Court showdown over Florida�s electors that hinged on far fewer disputed state ballots. Four years later, it was Mr. Bush�s turn to sweat as he handily won the national vote yet came close to losing Ohio � and the White House � in the college�s arcane state-by-state fragmentation of the popular majority.

The reform movement, driven by a bipartisan coalition called National Popular Vote, has a long way to go. But Hawaii is close to approval, and hundreds of legislators are sponsoring the change in more than 40 other states. It is an ingenious way around the fact that the alternative strategy of trying to amend the Constitution would require the approval of three-fourths of the states, leaving veto power in the hands of smaller states over-represented in the college.

The objection that reform would mean that rural interests would be ignored is a canard. The change would require candidates to present positions that galvanized all Americans. This is the truer and more certain path of democracy.