During the six presidential races in my adult lifetime, I’ve lived in three states – Virginia, Massachusetts and New York – that collectively have 31 million people and 58 electoral votes.

But despite all this political muscle, I can’t recall ever seeing a campaign ad by Reagan, a local appearance by Carter or a policy spin by Dukakis. No, each presidential race has been like a distant battle, watched with interest but not something I was a part of.

Why is this the case, given the populous, wealthy states I have lived in? Because our nation has something called the Electoral College, an antiquated system designed in the 18th century for reasons immaterial to our goals now. During the last election, we heard the machinery of this system grind and spark for more than a month, before it crankily spat out a “winner.”

Just days ago, we saw this “winner” — George W. Bush — put his hand on a bible and take the oath of office even though he lost the national election by more than a half million votes. That’s a good reason to scrap the Electoral College and replace it with a direct election.

But it’s not the only reason. The other reason is that, even if the system produces a clear winner, it usually causes candidates of both parties to ignore most of the states in the country, and the concerns of their voters.

The Electoral College, in most states, awards the all-important electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Consequently, if a state is solidly in one column or another, neither candidate pays it any mind.

Virginia has always been one of those states – voting solidly Republican for most presidential elections since World War II. Consequently, candidates largely ignore it, because they have little chance of changing the outcome, and thus winning additional votes.

During the presidential campaign last summer and fall, I lived in Massachusetts and New York. These states were solidly for Al Gore – so both Gore and Bush ignored them too. Which meant they ignored me!

I’m tired of this. I’m tired, I realized, of presidential candidates not caring whether or not I vote for them. My situation, and I expect my sentiments, are shared by millions if not most voters in the country.

In this last campaign, Bush and Gore directed their money, time and ads at voters in a half dozen or so “swing” states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Most importantly, they altered their positions on the issues to affect the vote in these key states

Because Pennsylvania has a lot of hunters, Gore softened his position on gun control, even though most Americans favor it. Gore won Pennsylvania, so he probably made the right choice – for himself. But the country lost.

It seems unlikely that we will get rid of the Electoral College completely. Like our system of allocating senators, the Electoral College gives disproportionate power to less populated rural states. Wyoming, which has about the same population as Virginia Beach, has two senators and a congressman, and three electoral votes. These rural states are unlikely to support switching to a system that decreases their power.

But we can change the system for the better, even if we keep the Electoral College itself. We can change it in such a way that would decrease the chance of producing a president that has lost the popular vote, while prompting candidates to pay attention to more areas of the country.

This change would be for every state to copy Maine and Nebraska, which right now allocate their electoral votes by congressional district, rather than on a winner-take all basis. In Maine and Nebraska, a presidential candidate gets one vote for each congressional district he wins, and two electoral votes for winning the state as a whole.

If every state did this, it would turn presidential races into a race of congressional districts, rather than state against state. This would produce a more finely grained campaign. Bush and Gore would not have ignored California, New York and Virginia, as they did in the last campaign, because there are too many congressional districts where the race is relatively close. Under such a system, you would have seen a big state like California break up into a patch-quilt of votes for either Bush or Gore.

Indeed, given the diversity of different regions around the country, you might start seeing true national campaigns, rather than the pseudo ones we have now.

One possible objection is that such a revised system might make it even more likely to have tie votes, because you could have as many close elections as there are congressional districts and states: 485. But we can still improve the machinery of voting. And if counting the votes takes a bit longer, well, we saw no real harm come to the nation, even though the last election was not over for a month.

A merit of this type of electoral reform is that you do not have to amend the U.S. Constitution Each state has the power to alter its own system. The federal government could provide some sort of incentive, as it does with so many programs from highways to health care.

Virginia should act now. I bet residents would enjoy being a part of presidential campaigns, rather than distant spectators