When losing Florida's 21 electoral votes cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election - defeated by a margin of only a few hundred ballots out of almost 6 million cast - Democratic Party leaders railed against the injustice of having a candidate win the national popular vote but still lose the election due to the winner-takes-all rules that most states use to award their electoral votes.

But now that there is a proposed ballot measure to dispense with the winner-take-all method of awarding California's electoral votes and award them by congressional district, Democrats are again crying foul - saying such a system would be unfair to the state's voters.

So which is it?

Well, it's both, of course. Democratic Party leaders are no more immune to the passions of the political process than anyone else. Human nature being what it is, the Democrats want to win the next election every bit as much as their Republican counterparts.

The above hypocrisy on the part of the Democrats is no more than normal human foible - but it does show why political reform is so very difficult.

Would the proposal to award California's delegates to the Electoral College by each congressional district better represent the will of the voters? Of course.

Would it help the eventual Republican nominee for the White House? Well, yeah, given that only two other states currently eschew the prevailing winner-take-all model. It's also nearly unimaginable that the Democratic nominee won't carry California in 2008, with voting registration patterns that give the state's Democrats a wide majority.

About 20 congressional districts in California have a Republican majority, including several in San Diego County. As an Associated Press story pointed out, allowing the Republican nominee to carry them would be akin to winning a populous state like Ohio.

So the Democratic Party leaders find themselves in the undoubtedly uncomfortable position of having to argue against a reform that would bring our system closer to a popular vote for the president - despite having supported just such reforms only six years ago.

The Electoral College - in which we technically vote not for a presidential candidate, but for delegates pledged to vote for a particular candidate - is written into the Constitution, and reinforced by the 12th Amendment.

So short of another constitutional amendment, we're not going to a direct popular election of the president.

Would California breaking up its winner-take-all approach hurt one party over the other? In the short term, most likely.

Would it spur other states to follow our lead, and eventually lead to a situation in which a repeat of the 2000 election is nearly impossible? Very possibly.

The bigger question is whether voters would support the proposed ballot measure, assuming it qualifies. It's one thing to say you want something closer to a popular vote for choosing the president. It's quite another to actually take the lead in putting such a system into place.

- Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.