Whenever the Electoral College hands the presidency to the candidate who lost the popular vote, such as famously happened in 2000, there understandably are outcries to change the system. But we think the state Senate was wise late last week to reject just such a proposal.

The Senate voted 30-20 against a bill that would have required Montana's Electoral College voters to give their three ballots to whichever candidate got the most votes across the nation. The idea was to make presidential elections more democratic and avoid situations like the 2000 result in Florida -- a font of ill feeling to this day.

It's an intuitively sensible idea, particularly in less populated states like Montana where people feel left out of the process.

Trouble is, it would have a completely unintended and unwanted effect.

The Electoral College was dreamed up precisely to give states with fewer people more say than they would have if elections were based solely on the popular vote. Just as the fact that each state has two senators regardless of their size gives people in smaller states proportionately more clout in Washington, the existence of the Electoral College forces presidential candidates to pay more attention to rural issues than they otherwise would.

If we switched over to a strictly popular vote, candidates would focus on the dozen or two dozen biggest metropolitan areas. Their populations dwarf the population of the entire state of Montana, and they essentially would determine the outcome of presidential races all by themselves.

And, unfortunately, metropolitan voters tend not to particularly care about issues like agriculture, stewardship of public lands, rural health care, and a whole slate of other issues that urban residents scarcely know exist.

The Electoral College might seem like an illogical old relic of a bygone time. But as long as states like Montana remain tiny compared to the big cities, it's our relic.