AUGUSTA — The Maine House of Representatives advanced a bill to withdraw from a multistate compact that could eventually require Maine to award its four Electoral College votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Barbara Bagshaw, R-Windham, cleared the House in a 76-71 vote Tuesday. Three Democrats and two independents joined Republicans to support an effort that would effectively repeal a law narrowly passed by the previous legislature to join the National Popular Vote Compact.

The Senate, which endorsed the compact last year in an 18-12 vote, delayed action on the bill, LD 252. It’s not clear when senators will take it up.

Maine was the 16th state, along with Washington, D.C., to join the compact, which would take effect once the coalition reached the 270 votes needed to elect a president in the Electoral College. Currently, the states that have joined the compact control 209 electoral votes — 61 votes shy of the threshold needed.

Gov. Janet Mills allowed the bill to become law without her signature, after it passed by a single vote in the House last year.

Arguments in the House largely mirrored the previous debate.

Proponents of the compact argued that the presidency is a unique national office that should go to whoever wins the most votes nationally, even if they end up with fewer Electoral College votes. They argued the current system forces candidates to concentrate on winning votes in a handful of swing states, while ignoring others.

But opponents argued that Maine’s current system, which awards two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one to the winner in each of the state’s two congressional districts, should be preserved and emulated across the country. They argued that rural voters, especially in the 2nd District, would be silenced and that Maine would be giving its influence over to larger states.

“Under the current system, Mainer’s votes matter, our rural communities matter, our people’s priorities matter,” Bagshaw said. “But under the national popular vote, Maine’s influence would be cast aside for larger populations thousands of miles away.”

“Maine has long embraced an independent spirit,” Bagshaw said. “We were the first state in the nation to split its electoral college votes by congressional district — a system that reflects our political diversity and values and every voice, whether rural or urban.”

Nebraska — the only other state to have a similar system to Maine — considered changing to a winner-take-all system but kept its current system.

If the compact had been in place for the 2024 election, Bagshaw noted, Maine would have had to cast all four of its Electoral College votes for Donald Trump because he won the national popular vote. Trump won one of Maine’s electoral votes by winning the 2nd District, but Democrat Kamala Harris won three votes by winning statewide and in the 1st District.

After lawmakers joined the compact last year, Republicans launched a people’s veto to overturn it, but they did not get the enough signatures.