2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumNY Times: Blue Dot for Obama Prompts Red Nebraska to Revisit Electoral College Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/us/politics/blue-dot-for-obama-prompts-red-nebraska-to-revisit-electoral-college-rules.html?rref=us&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&pgtype=article-snip-
LINCOLN, Neb. If this state had an official color, it would most certainly be red. Football fans here don scarlet sweatshirts each game day, red meat is a dietary staple and, for decades, Republican presidential candidates filled Nebraskas borders on the electoral map with their partys hue.
But in 2008, a Nebraska quirk injected a drop of blue into that sea of red, in the form of a single, lonely electoral vote for the Democratic presidential candidate.
Nebraska is one of just two states, along with Maine, that do not award all their electoral voters to the statewide winner. And that meant that in 2008, Barack Obama picked up an electoral vote from the congressional district around Omaha, even as Senator John McCain trounced him across the rest of the state.
One electoral vote out of five in Nebraska and 538 nationally might seem trivial, but Republicans do not see it that way. It was the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson beat Barry Goldwater in 1964, when Mr. Obama was a toddler, that the state awarded any votes to a Democrat.
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rogerashton
(3,920 posts)Giving one electoral vote to each congressional district thinking that it would favor the conservative rural districts. Numerically, it does -- one vote in the rural districts counts for more than one in Omaha. But they were foiled by their own Gerrymander tactics.
merrily
(45,251 posts)If that happens, we just might be cooked, unless we pick up Texas.
Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Telcontar
(660 posts)Would make the election of Presidents at least a little closer to the actual will of the people.
lastlib
(23,336 posts)and you'll be glad we don't do that. We'd be talking about President McCain and (God help us!) Vice-President Palin if we did. Granted, we would have been talking about President Gore after 2000 (what a refreshing thought! no SCOTUS selection!), but I think it's a double-edged sword that could cut us badly in the current environment.