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Obama wins one electoral vote in Nebraska

obey-barack-paster Nebraska politics.. In the words of Hunter S. Thompson: when the going gets weird, the weird go pro.

Did you know that Nebraska has a unicameral legislature? In other words, there’s just the Senate, no house. (To me it makes sense (I almost wrote a paper on it in college) but that’s a completely different post.) Also, we’re one of just two states that splits it’s electoral votes. (The other one is Maine.) Thing is, it’s never happened before in the history of the state! This evening it was announced that John McCain got four, and Barack Obama got one.

How does it work? Let me see if I can explain it.

Step one: The winner of the popular vote for the state gets two electoral votes.

Step two: The winner in each of our three congressional districts gets one electoral vote for each district they won.

In the past, the man who won the whole state did so by winning all three congressional districts. This time John McCain won just two of the three districts. So, he got four, and Obama got the other one.

My only disappointment is that I live in one of the other two congressional districts.

Published by Michael Sauers

Michael Sauers is currently the Director of Technology for Do Space in Omaha, NE. Michael has been training librarians in technology for the past twenty years and has also been a public library trustee, a bookstore manager for a library friends group, a reference librarian, serials cataloger, technology consultant, and bookseller since earning his MLS in 1995 from the University at Albany’s School of Information Science and Policy. Michael has also written dozens of articles for various journals and magazines and his fourteenth book, Emerging Technologies: A Primer for Librarians (w/ Jennifer Koerber) was published in May 2015 and more books are on the way. In his spare time he blogs at travelinlibrarian.info, runs The Collector’s Guide to Dean Koontz Web site, takes many, many photos, and typically reads more than 100 books a year.

3 Replies to “Obama wins one electoral vote in Nebraska”

  1. Now it all makes sense. I read an explanation on another site of how NE divides their electoral votes and was baffled. Not anymore! Thanks.

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