ASHINGTON - As George W. Bush and Al Gore frantically maneuver to capture a majority in the Electoral College, their colleagues in both parties are pushing a plan to get rid of it.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic senator-elect from New York, pledged yesterday to join in the fight in the US Senate to abolish the Electoral College, the body that formally chooses the president in the December following the election.
''We are a very different country than we were 200 years ago,'' Clinton said. ''I believe strongly that in a democracy we should respect the will of the people and, to me, that means it's time to do away with the Electoral College and move to the popular election of our president.''
Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy, has vowed to introduce legislation in the new Congress to scrap the system, which he called ''an appendage to an anachronism.'' One of his Republican colleagues, Represent-ative Ray LaHood of Illinois, has been arguing for years for direct presidential elections.
''This approach would hopefully rectify a potentially huge, looming political crisis: an election that results in a president being elected without winning the popular vote,'' LaHood warned members of the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the matter in 1997.
Three years later, LaHood's prediction may come true.
Assuming that his current slender lead in the popular vote holds up, Gore would have won a hypothetical direct national election. But if Bush hangs on to his narrow lead in Florida, he will take all of the state's 25 electoral votes and with it, the presidency.
Lawmakers said they expect that when Congress convenes in early January there will be a flurry of bills introduced to eliminate or weaken the Electoral College.
''At a minimum, there needs to be a serious review of the Electoral College,'' said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Lowell and a colleague of Delahunt's on the Judiciary Committee. But ''probably we should let things quiet down for six months or so'' to allow any bad feelings over the ultimate result of this election to dissipate, he said.
Defenders of the Electoral College also are organizing. Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he has been approached by several GOP congressmen who have asked him to help stave off a call for abolishing the system.
Challenging the centuries-old system is difficult. In fact, there have been more than 700 attempts - all unsuccessful - to kill off or alter the composition and role of the body, said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Republican of New York and a constitutional scholar on the judiciary panel.
Nadler, long a supporter of the Electoral College, said he is now undecided about it. The Florida recount may be messy, but at least it appears to be limited to Florida.
''If we don't have an Electoral College, you'd be recounting every precinct in each US state,'' Nadler said. ''It would go on for months, maybe years.''
The purpose of the college, many members agree, has been obviated by a decrease in regional rivalries and dramatic improvements in information technology.
When the country was new, residents of various states were suspicious of other regions, and it was feared that presidential candidates would be a collection of territorial heroes, each supported by their own state or region.
Before television, radio or national newspapers, a candidate would not be able to reach voters in other areas and quiet those fears, Nadler explained.
The Electoral College was meant to be a group of smart, honorable men who would get together and choose the best leader, although today's critics note that it was also a way for an elite group of white men to choose a president without being bound by the desires of less-educated and less-affluent Americans.
In an age when presidential candidates jet all over the country, with national strategies and TV campaigns in markets across the United States, there is less of a need for the Electoral College, its critics say.
Discarding it would require a constitutional amendment that would have to be approved by two-thirds of each house of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures. The president would have no say in the matter.
Polls indicate substantial support for changing the system. A post-election survey for The Hawthorn Group in Virginia estimated that 61 percent of Americans favor electing the president by direct vote, against 26 opposed.
But getting the measure through Congress may be difficult. Some Democrats and Republicans fear that a direct vote for president would give third parties more of an opportunity to challenge the national parties.
