Saturday, November 08, 2008

Er, Make That 365 Electoral Votes

From today’s Omaha World-Herald:
For the first time ever, a blue circle will appear in Nebraska on national electoral maps.

Democrat Barack Obama won the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District on Friday, scooping up one of the state’s five electoral votes.

In the process, he made history and shone the spotlight on Nebraska’s unusual electoral college system.

Obama won 8,434 of 15,039 mail-in ballots counted Friday by Douglas County election officials. These early ballots arrived in the election commissioner’s office too late to be included in Tuesday’s election results.

The additional votes gave Obama a 1,260-vote lead over Republican John McCain in unofficial returns. McCain won the popular vote statewide and four electoral votes.
The full story can be found here.

1 comment:

mvymvy said...

Unfortunately the congressional district method of awarding electoral votes (currently used in Maine and Nebraska) also does not help make every vote matter. In NC, for example, there are only 4 of the 13 congressional districts that would be close enough to get any attention. A smaller fraction of the county's population lives in competitive congressional districts (about 12%) that in the current battleground states (about 30%). Also, a second-place candidate could still win the White House without winning the national popular vote.