Redoing The Electoral College

Here is California, there is a proposal that would end the current winner take all the electoral votes in the presidential election
According to the Pasadena Star-News http://pasadenastarnews.com, right now 49% of Californians favor the initive by Republican attorney and activist Thomas Hiltachk that would allocate the electoral votes based on the candidate that won one of the congressional districts rather than all votes going to whoever won the state as a whole.
In the 2004 election, Democrat John Kerry won California with 54% of the votes. But, President Bush carried 22 congressional districts. Thus, while Sen. Kerry would have still won, President Bush would still get the 22 electoral votes, which would have put President Bush's electoral vote total over 300.
Two other states, Maine and Nebraska, currently operate under this system. Because they are small states, there has not been a case in recent elections where that system made any kind of difference.
This is a much better proposal than what has passed in Maryland that would allocate the state's electoral votes to the winner of the national presidential vote. In the last election, if one follows this logic, all of Maryland's electoral votes would have gone to President Bush, even though Sen. Kerry won the votes in Maryland by a roughly 2-1 margin. That sounds like disenfranchisement and the reason they are thinking about doing this in Maryland is to abolish the electoral college entirely.
The California proposal does two things. First, it makes it meaningful for both presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican, to visit California on a more constant basis to shore up support. And, the electoral vote would just be broken down to reflect the popular vote of Californians. Everyone wins except those who want to eliminate the electoral college, which is mostly Democrats.
The reason the electoral college was enshrined into the constitution was intentional to make sure that large states would not have more power than smaller states to determine who would be president. It has worked well for over 200 years and can be tinkered a little, but not eliminated.
If this initiative makes the next California statewide ballot, it is a good compromise that is more important than where the state is on the party nomination process. It is worth looking at and as I see it should pass.