Electoral Process Faces Opposition
By Jessica Kaiser and The Associated Press
SIDNEY - A battle in Nebraska’s officially nonpartisan Legislature over the state’s unusual system of splitting its electoral votes is likely to be fought along party lines.
Even before Nebraska’s electoral votes were split for the first time this year, Republican leaders were talking about changing the system. Then, Democratic President-elect Barack Obama won the electoral vote tied to the state’s 2nd Congressional District, while Republican John McCain won the state’s other four votes.
Sidney’s Pat Dorwart had front row seats for the historical vote.
“I am here as an elector for the electoral college,” Dorwart told the Sun-Telegraph in a phone interview earlier this month,“This is quite the procedure.”
A Republican and a McCain supporter, Dorwart said she feels honored to be a part of this historical event.
“I am very glad I was chosen,” she said. 
In a recent phone interview with the Sun-Telegraph, Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale said after the bill passed under then Gov. Ben Nelson, it was appealed and promptly vetoed.
Gale said that the one electoral vote received by Obama this election “re-energized thinking on split party voting.”
He also said Nebraska has a slight advantage over other larger states because our two senator’s electoral votes are both equal.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Gale said. “It is about Nebraska deciding if it is fair to split votes.”
Gale said he believes this will be an issue that state lawmakers will revisit in the future.
The future is proving to be sooner than anticipated as a pre-session survey reported that 18 of 49 state senators said they supported changing Nebraska’s electoral vote system to winner-take-all. Thirteen said they opposed changing the law, nine said they were unsure and nine didn’t respond to the survey.
Going to a winner-take-all format would favor the GOP, which holds a strong voter advantage statewide: Nebraska has some 165,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrat. Republicans’ advantage in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, is much slighter.
It would take 17 senators to block a vote on changing the law.
Nebraska’s electoral votes had never been split before November, and a Democratic presidential nominee hasn’t won in the state since Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that do not award all of their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the state’s popular vote.
Two of Nebraska’s five votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide election and each of the other votes is awarded to the winner in each of the state’s three congressional districts.
Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln said he hasn’t made up his mind yet, but worries that the split-vote system is “unconsciously fomenting a ‘Nebraska divided.’”
Other senators, including Sen. Pete Pirsch of Omaha, said Nebraska needs to get in line with the other 48 states that give all their electoral votes to the statewide winner.
But Sen. Danielle Nantkes of Lincoln said the unique system meant an infusion of capital into the economy in Omaha and increased voter excitement.
And Sen. Russ Karpisek of Wilber said the split-vote system lets all voices be heard in a diverse state.
“This is as close as we can get to each individual vote counting, other than getting rid of the electoral college,” Karpisek said.
Nebraska Republican Party leaders have said they’ll urge a state senator to introduce a bill this session to repeal the unusual arrangement. Republican Gov. Dave Heineman has said if legislation is passed by the Legislature, “I’ll sign it.”
Democrats say Heineman and others are just being poor sports.
But Heineman says it’s about being in sync with others states: “Either they ought to be like us, or we ought to be like the system was set up.”
The Electoral College system was established by the Founding Fathers as a compromise between election of the president by Congress and election by popular vote.
Under the system, each state has a number of presidential electors equal to the number of its senators and representatives in Congress.
It takes 270 of the 538 electoral votes to get elected president.
Republicans have tried to change the system in the past. They were thwarted in 1995 and 1997 by the veto of former Democratic Gov. Ben Nelson, now a U.S. senator and Obama supporter.