Make an argument for just one idea • Nebraska Examiner
Nebraska’s recent blue dot debate wasn’t entirely about voter suppression. You can see it from there, though. Changing the way Nebraskans allocate their Electoral College votes is more like voter devaluation.
I’m referring, of course, to last-minute statements from several Nebraska senators, Gov. Jim Pillen, former President Donald Trump and South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, among others. All but the former president gathered at the governor’s mansion to plan how to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state, with the blue dot of Omaha’s 2nd Congressional District being targeted in their plots. At that point, oddsmakers were calculating how much it would cost Pillen to convene the Legislature’s second special session of the year, a costly, tedious first.
Thankfully, enough reasonable state senators saw this strategy for what it was: Republicans hoping to devalue the votes of the state’s 2nd Congressional District by giving them another Electoral College vote in this close presidential race.
The focus is on the role of state Sen. Mike McDonnell, a recent Republican convert who (at this point) politely refuses to sign on to the thin and specious argument that Nebraska should fall in line with the rest of the country. That means, of course, that all five of the state’s Electoral College votes will go to the presidential candidate with the most votes.
You remember the Electoral College, a clunky, dubious relic from the history of representative government. While the argument that we need to abolish the Electoral College entirely is another topic for another review, a brief history of its origins reveals the tether of slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise. Even Broadway’s “Hamilton”, whose lyrics “The Ten Dollar Founding Fathers” revealed the reasons for the Electoral College system.
I digress. The question at hand is whether Nebraska should remain one of two states that divides Electoral College votes by congressional districts. We’ve done this for the past eight presidential elections. Reliably red Nebraska did have a sparkling blue dot on the Tote board twice, in 2016 and 2020.
With a third vote in mind, many voters in the area planted blue dots in their yards. In response, others posted signs with a red map of Nebraska. In democracies, competition is not just a thing, it is a thing in and of itself, a predictor of potentially high turnout.
That’s good, because the core argument against the current system is an unwillingness to win elections based on one’s own merits and vision, but rather on the electoral machinery or, in some states, gerrymandered maps. Politics is the art and science of convincing voters that your character, behavior, experience, record, policy proposals, and vision are better than those of your opponent.
However, we depart from this premise. We spent a lot of time trying to change the rules…like turning Nebraska into a winner-take-all state. Or, as we’ve seen for several years, peddling convoluted and baseless claims of election manipulation, going further and further down the conspiracy rabbit hole.
One of the lasting images of the 2024 election season will be Wausau, Wisconsin, Mayor John Diny rolling the city’s only ballot drop box on a cart outside Wausau City Hall. Wausau is a city in north-central Wisconsin with a population of approximately 40,000. The state allows local communities to decide whether to use drop boxes.
Yet Deeney, a Republican, single-handedly determined to change the election, not through better policies or a clearer vision or even an impeccable moral life, but through an evidence-free thumbs-down on several democratic processes. . . Deeney’s actions were dodgy…and possibly illegal. The county’s district attorney has asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice to launch a formal investigation into Deeney.
Cunning forces have transformed today’s political landscape. We can think back to past elections and tell ourselves they were about ideas and persuasion. Sometimes I do, even though most politics today is about winning rather than governing. Still, our habit of reshaping voting procedures—either before or after votes are counted—is a bad sign for a democracy.
To wit: At the mansion meeting, a state senator vowed to introduce legislation at the next regular session to permanently stop the rising blue dot.
It makes one wonder if that was the only thing on their mind.
