Electoral vote split survives (WIN for D's)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Omaha World Herald

By Martha Stoddard

LINCOLN — Nebraska will keep its split electoral vote system for at least another year, thanks to a split vote in a legislative committee.

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee was divided 4-4 in a straw vote on changing the system, State Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln, the committee chairman, said Thursday.

The informal vote marked the latest defeat for Republican efforts to return Nebraska to a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes.

Sen. Beau McCoy of Omaha introduced the latest proposal, Legislative Bill 21.

Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20110310/NEWS01/703109822/-1#electoral-vote-split-survives

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FULL story at link. All this because Obama got ONE electoral college vote. The first for a D in Ne since LBJ.

Photo: http://www.omaha.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=OW&Date=20110310&Category=NEWS01&ArtNo=703109822&Ref=AR&maxw=490&maxh=275
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama campaigned in Omaha. He snagged one of the state's five electoral votes that November.

[bluestateguy]

1. There is actaully a valid non-partisan argument for the policy

As a Democrat, hell yes, keep the split.

But I would make another, just as strong argument to non-Democrats in Nebraska: this system ensures that both presidential candidates will pay at least some attention to Nebraska issues in the campaign, because they'd have to fight for that one district EV.

Both parties would just ignore Nebraska if it was winner take all, and treat it like Wyoming or Utah: just another blood red, small state that would not be on anybody's radar screen.

[MH1]

6. but being ignored by candidates favors republicans

since republicans tend to do better with uninformed voters.

[golfguru]

2. Split vote makes sense in all 50 states.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. From a fairness point of view, it certainly does

From the point of view of a state saying "pay attention to us", not necessarily. In some cases, it would make them less worth bothering about, because there'd be fewer electoral votes to be swung.

[golfguru]

4. In reality though

some states are so obviously blue or red that the other party does not spend
many resources there. A split vote would mean both parties will have to pay
attention to every state.

[Jim Lane]

5. There's an argument against the fairness of split votes, based on the Senate malapportionment

The small states have a disproportionate number of votes in the Electoral College, because every state gets two Senators regardless of population. It's been argued that the winner-take-all system helps make up for this, because it means that each large state casts all its electoral votes as a bloc. This means that each large state is more likely to be the one that swings the election (like Ohio in 2004). This gives more influence to the large states.

We could switch to a split-vote system in which each Congressional District names one elector. That would be roughly fair (with a bit of a bias toward any state so small that its population wouldn't qualify it for even one CD if it weren't guaranteed). To adopt the split-vote system nationwide with the current Constitution, though, would be to have the roughly fair one-CD-one-vote system, PLUS a one-state-two-votes system that would greatly favor the small states.

The whole damn Electoral College is an anachronism, but replacing it with a simple nationwide popular vote would have its own problems. Those problems would be greatly lessened if we had completely reliable elections -- but we don't.