Sour Grapes In Nebraska

Daniel De Groot — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:00:00 GMT

So imagine you're a state that has given its electoral college votes to Republican candidates in every election except for the very biggest Democratic landslides, and has done so for 11 straight elections. But you have this very cute provision, whereby some of your state's electoral college votes can be peeled off, if the other party manages to win in any of the state's federal congressional districts. Now of course, this has never happened since the rule was put in place, so it was just a bit of cute trivia for election geeks to blather about, but no one expected it to actually happen.

Then one election, it actually does. Now you're the State's dominant party, the Republican party. What do you do?

Why, end the system and go back to a winner-take-all, of course.

Nebraska GOP chairman Mark Quandahl said the Republican Party wants to "put Nebraska in line with the 48 other states in the union that are allocating their electoral votes the correct way."
He said they'll urge a state senator to introduce a bill to repeal the unusual arrangement next year, but he objects to suggestions his party is being a bad sport.
"Pshaw. That isn't true," Quandahl said.

Strong rebuttal there, Mr Quandahl.

David Kramer with the Republican Party says it has nothing to do with the increased number of registered democrats. "I think it's a question of fairness." Kramer says the system only works for the democrats. Kramer says, "If it's good for us here than it ought to be good for us in California, in New York and those places where democrats would fight tooth and nail to make sure this kind of proposal never ever got passed." 80-year-old Helen Houston, who lives next door to De Mott, agrees.
Registered republican, Helen Houston says, "I think it has sparked a lot of energy but I still feel we need to be the same as the rest of the country." Republicans have tried to change the system in the past in 19-95 and 97, both times former Democratic Governor Ben Nelson vetoed it.
The chances the voter system will change next year depend on Nebraska's legislature. With new senators coming in, it depends which party gets the majority of the seats.

The Obama campaign mounted an unprecedented field operation in Omaha, registering new voters and prompting a record outpouring of early voters.

Last one:

Obama ignored Nebraska's history this year, sending 16 paid staffers into the 2nd District and opening three offices in Omaha.

It seems perfectly clear the law accomplished its intended purpose. A major party candidate invested time and resources into your state, and managed to swipe an electoral college vote, making it even more likely both parties would invest in Nebraska in 2012.

I guess in the NE GOP's defence, they have been trying to get rid of this law for some time. Though the current Republican governor has been in office since 2005, and the "non-partisan" (ha!) State unicameral state legislature sat at 31R-15D-3I before the election, so I'm not sure what was stopping them.

Speaking of the state leg, it appears that the Democrats have gained a couple, bringing them to 17 seats with 2 still undecided. According to the legislative rules, 1/3 of the legislature can block cloture on bills (the unicameral legislature was originally the Senate so it kept senate-like rules). A caveat though from that New Nebraska Network link:

On many state and local issues, the "D" or "R" next to a legislators' name does not and should not have a damn thing to do with how they vote and represent their constituents' best interests. Recognizing that, 17 Democratic votes wouldn't mean a whole lot because there is bound to be too wide a range of interests within such a group - especially on issues that divide urban and rural Nebraska.

So I gather there are a few mini-Nelsons within the NE leg Dems, who will regularly vote with the GOP.

Anyway, looks like Nebraska will return to national electoral irrelevance in time to prevent 2012's Republican candidate from having to invest any effort into the state.

At a National Level, this is an opening to talk about real electoral college reform via the National Popular Vote project. If Republicans want to whine that California wasn't willing to go first in surrendering a massive electoral Democratic advantage, then they should get on board. Nebraska doesn't even have a legislator willing to introduce a PV bill. It polls really well even in red states and leaves Republicans in the uncomfortable position of fighting against democracy. Seems like a winner, NE-Dems.

Electoral College Shenanigans: now NC, next CA?

I Voted for Kodos — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:15:55 GMT

This weekend, Chris Bowers posted on North Carolina's flirtation with shaking up the electoral college. The gist of it is that they want to stop giving all their electoral votes to the statewide winner and start apportioning them by Congressional district. I was kind of ambivalent about this idea until I gave it some more thought. And by "gave it some more thought", I mean read Hendrick Hertzberg. Because it turns out California is going to have to consider it now too.
As Hertzberg also points out, the two states that currently have this system, Nebraska and Maine, are small and homogenous. Hence, their decision didn't have much impact on the electoral map. But the whole issue really comes into perspective for me when a giant like California enters the picture.

Suddenly I see how this proportional allotment thing is really just treading water at best, or a horrible unbalancing force at worst. Think about it: California gives up approximately 19 of its 55 votes to Republicans, but other big states, like Texas, don't respond by parsing their electoral votes to Democrats' benefit. This is where unilateral disarmament could literally ruin our whole electoral system.

So why take the risk in any state? The absolute best-case scenario is if every state goes with this plan, which would leave us with essentially the same amount of disputed territory, just spread out more. Hertzberg:

Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this "reform" at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we'd have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.

At this point, I have to return to the issue at the core of one of the debates in the comments of the original post: which plan is more democratic, and how much does it matter? Hertzberg's implicit argument in this passage is for the national popular vote, at least over the proportional scheme. And it makes perfect sense: the problem with the current set-up is that winner-take-all is not democratic. And if it's not democratic on the state-wide level, why would it be democratic on the district level?

To make it truly democratic, you'd have to keep parsing down the levels: from state to district, district to ward, ward to precinct...until finally you got down from precinct to person. The logic is inescapable--national popular vote is the only solution.

Open Left - national popular vote

Sour Grapes In Nebraska

Electoral College Shenanigans: now NC, next CA?