Connecticut would no longer award its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who won the state vote, but instead to the candidate who got the most votes in the national count, under the provisions of a bill recently passed by the House and Senate.

In 2004, for example, Connecticut was won by Democratic nominee John Kerry over Republican President George W. Bush by a margin of 10.4 percent — a trouncing. But if the law was in play then, Connecticut would have assigned its seven electoral votes to Bush because he won the national vote by 2.4 percent.

Sounds like disenfranchisement.

It passed the Senate 21-14 and House 77-73, largely, but not exclusively, on party-line votes, Democrats in favor.

Connecticut is not alone in going down this strange road. It is the 11th state ready to award their electoral votes not to the candidate chosen by the voters in their respective states, but to the candidate winning the national vote.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said he would sign the bill. He shouldn’t.

The good news is that this scheme is unlikely to actually ever go into effect. We can only hope that's the case.

Its intent is to do an end run around the rules for electing a U.S. president as outlined in the Constitution. Under the Constitution it is the electors, designated by the states, who elect the president. Every state, despite size and population, gets two electors for its two U.S. senators, plus a number of electors equal to its House representatives.

This gives relatively small states, such as Connecticut, greater influence in electing a president than their populations would suggest. Connecticut, for instance, has 514,300 people per elector, compared to 744,740 per elector in Texas.

Ironically, given that our elected leaders would give this small-state protection away, it is rooted in what is known as the “Connecticut Plan,” introduced at the Constitutional Convention. It provided for a lower House with representation determined by population and a Senate, with two members from each state. The plan recognized that since this is a federation of states, some degree of equal standing was appropriate, regardless of size and population.

The creation of the “Electoral College” and the assigning of electoral votes was the outgrowth of the same logic.

But this system sometimes elects a president who does not get the most popular votes. The most dramatic example yet came with the November 2016 election of President Trump by a wide electoral margin, though Hillary Clinton defeated him in the popular vote by nearly 3 million.

Out of such frustration was born the National Popular Vote movement. States agree to enter into a compact to award their electoral votes to the candidate with the most votes in the national election. The compact does not go into effect until the collective electoral votes of the participating states reaches 270, the electoral votes needed to elect a president.

This plan has several problems.

Imagine the chaos if the national vote was too close to call. The nation would be faced with recounts in 50 states and the accompanying legal battles. In 2000, a recount in only one state was determinative and became such a prolonged mess it ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

What happens if one or more state legislatures, under pressure from voters in a close election, withdraw from the compact on the eve of the vote or shortly after? Proponents say the compact prohibits that, but the courts could well see things differently.

It could result in multi-candidate races and a president winning with something like 35 percent of the vote, hardly a unifying outcome.

Then there are the serious constitutional questions. Will state or federal courts find it constitutional to appoint a state’s electors based on results in other states?

And, by the way, the U.S. Constitution states: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State.”

Why this effort to work around the Constitution is likely to never be tested is that states that have tended Republican show no interest. This remains a Blue State, Democratic movement unable to reach 270. With Connecticut’s entrance into the compact it would reach 172.

The same political realities and small-state opposition is why efforts to enact a popular vote the right way, by amending the U.S. Constitution, have not gotten very far. An amendment has to win two-thirds approval in both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states.

The Democratic Party would be better off devoting its energy to figuring out why its policies are largely attracting majority support only in Northeast and West Coast states.

The Day editorial board meets with political, business and community leaders to formulate editorial viewpoints. It is composed of President and Publisher Timothy Dwyer, Executive Editor Izaskun E. Larraneta, Owen Poole, copy editor, and Lisa McGinley, retired deputy managing editor. The board operates independently from The Day newsroom.