| | Obama wins NE-02, GOP whines
The Republican Party never ceases to amaze me. They'll have no problems with a certain system, so long as it benefits them, but when it works the way it's supposed to … but benefits the Democrats, they cry foul. About a year ago, the California Republican Party tried to change how the state allots its 55 electoral votes, all but guaranteeing the 15 or so electoral districts that make up Orange County (and other conservative bastions of the state) would go to the Republican presidential candidate. They failed.
Now that NE-02 has gone for Obama, giving Obama a single electoral vote from Nebraska, undeniably "purpling" the state, the Nebraska Republican Party has announced they'll try to pass a bill through the state legislature to have the state's electoral votes be "winner-take all" as opposed to the current system. Guess the Maine-Nebraska system's only a good thing when it's used in a blue state, eh?  .
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2008/11/07/news/local/doc4914d398e3e58589699188.txt
Obama claims 2nd District electoral vote
BY DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star
Friday, Nov 07, 2008 - 09:25:01 pm CST
Barack Obama may have made a little more history Friday, apparently banking a presidential electoral vote in Nebraska and running up his score.
With the early vote count completed in Douglas County, Obama grabbed a 1,260-vote lead over John McCain in the 2nd Congressional District and his supporters laid claim to one of the state’s five electoral votes.
“Today, Nebraska’s 2nd District voters added an Obamaha-shaped exclamation point to Barack Obama’s historic election,” Sen. Ben Nelson said.
“It really is a new day in America when he even picks up an electoral vote in Nebraska.”
But the results remained unofficial Friday, with almost 5,300 provisional ballots in Douglas County to be considered next week.
But those ballots, some of which will be ruled invalid, are not expected to vary much from other Douglas County results favoring Obama.
An Obama victory would rack up the first Democratic electoral vote in red-state Nebraska since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson captured the state.
And it would bump Obama’s electoral vote count to 365, far above the 270 required to win the presidency.
The metropolitan Omaha district is composed of Douglas County and portions of Sarpy County.
Here’s Friday’s unofficial 2nd District count:
Obama, 134,168.
McCain, 132,908.
McCain had led Obama by 569 votes Wednesday. But the additional count of early ballots in Douglas County added these figures to the results:
Obama, 8,434.
McCain, 6,605.
Sarpy County totals already had been completed.
The Obama campaign mounted an unprecedented field operation in Omaha, registering new voters and prompting a record outpouring of early voters.
Nebraska awards one of its five electoral votes to the winner of each of its three congressional districts. The other two votes go to the statewide victor.
It was that split-vote system that generated an exciting presidential race in the 2nd District this year, Nelson said.
“It shouldn’t be tampered with by those with partisan motives,” he said.
Republican leaders have signaled their intention to attempt to repeal the district-vote allocation in the 2009 Legislature, returning to a winner-take-all system of awarding all of Nebraska’s electoral votes to the statewide winner. These knuckleheads find every reason in the book to oppose a certain way of doing things if it works for their opponents. As I recall, although the Nebraska Republican Party urged the state legislature to vote against the current method of allotting Nebraska's electoral votes in 1991, but ignored it when the entire state went red in the previous four presidential elections. Now that a corner of the Cornhusker State has gone blue, they cry foul and demand the "problem" be fixed immediately. In 2004, a referendum was held in the state of Colorado to adopt the Maine-Nebraska system of allotting electoral votes. Thanks to the Republican Party crying foul, it was defeated by a pretty slim margin.
Here's another example – Republicans are just dandy with a Governor choosing a replacement for a deposed or deceased Senator. But when that Governor happens to be a Democrat (and especially if the senator being replaced for whatever reason is a Republican), they start whining about how there should be an immediate special election and how we should keep politicians out of the process.
Now, to be fair, I have no problem with the Maine-Nebraska method of allotting electoral votes. However, it should be done across the board. All 50 states, plus the District, should use it. In a great many states (which only have three electoral votes to begin with), this won't change anything. But it'll make things interesting for states like California, Texas, New York, and a couple others. Thoughts? |
| | Posted 11/9/2008 1:09 PM - 69 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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