Trump working in the wrong direction

Instead of changing Nebraska, maybe he should look to fix everyone else.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

It wasn’t really on my radar until this bid by the Nebraska legislature made national news, but a Trump-backed (along with the state’s governor) proposal to change the state’s rather unique allocation of electoral votes - which, like Maine, is based on allotting electoral votes both by Congressional district and statewide - to a “winner-take-all” system favored by the other 48 states and District of Columbia failed last Wednesday, likely dooming the proposal as Nebraska is wrapping up their legislative session for the year.

I’ve always been fascinated by the concept because, to me, it puts more states in play. Yes, it would take away from Republicans in some states, such as Texas and Florida, but it may add significant portions of heretofore “blue” states like California, Illinois, and New York into play. Even my erstwhile stomping grounds of Maryland would give the GOP candidate a vote since the First District is reliably Republican. And just look at a map of a state like Minnesota, where one or two Democrat districts vote so overwhelmingly for the DFL that it tilts the state. Under this idea, those few troublesome states in the upper Midwest may become red states after all. Moreover, it may encourage some areas to become competitive: how many GOP voters on the Eastern Shore of Maryland skip the election because they know their candidate doesn’t have a chance to win statewide? Now they can insure their chosen Presidential hopeful will get an electoral vote. (Same goes for the liberals in Austin and Disney.)

I think this would make Congressional races more important in most states, with the exceptions being places like Delaware where we only have one Congressional district, meaning the state is automatically going to give its three electoral votes to the overall winner. But imagine the scenario where a state gives just two electoral votes to its overall winner (representing the two Senators, who are elected statewide) and divides the rest by Congressional district.

Would this have changed history? Let’s look at 2020.

Forget the idea that Joe Biden’s allies stole a few million votes for him (okay, just enough to win Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) and consider how the race played out.

Joe Biden carried 25 states plus Washington D.C, while Donald Trump carried 25 states. At that point it’s 53-50 Biden. (Since Washington, D.C. does not have voting members of Congress, we have to keep that as winner-take-all.)

However, while Democrats gained a 222-213 edge in the House, the splitting of tickets resulted in 18 House seats where Republicans won being taken by Joe Biden, while the reverse only occurred five times. Thus, the Democrats won 235 Congressional districts while Republicans only netted 200, meaning the Electoral College would have still gone to Biden but in a more proportional manner, 288-250. Biden wins even without the states he may have pilfered, but only by 278-260. Now, if they took a five-finger discount on a few House seats along the way, that may have changed the game further.

The reverse would have been true in 2016, since Donald Trump won 30 states (giving him a 60-43 advantage right away) while the GOP won 241-194 in the House. At that point Trump is potentially over 300 electoral votes and it’s doubtful that more than 30 Congressional districts voted for a GOP House member yet selected Hillary Clinton. (Ballotpedia says there were 25 such districts, so they would have been short: Trump wins 276-262.) But see how close these overall electoral races become?

Looking back even further in history, let’s consider a blowout election such as 1984, where, with winner-take-all, Ronald Reagan won all but 13 electoral votes - those of opponent Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota and Washington, D.C. Using this formula, Reagan would have gotten off to a 98-5 lead. However, he would have needed the big margin to stave off the 253-181 Democrat margin in the House, holding on to a 280-258 Electoral College victory. (Presumably the one Conservative Party Congressman from New York came from a district Reagan carried.) In reality, the ticket splitting probably went a lot further in that election given the number of Reagan Democrats there were, so more than likely Ronaldus Magnus was in the 300-320 electoral vote range overall under this counting formula.

And then there are other alternative histories to consider. While he won a smattering of counties across the country, and defeated the incumbent President Bush in two states (Maine and Utah), Ross Perot couldn’t pick up any electoral votes in 1992. (Which is too bad because I voted for him.) But what if the next third party “spoiler” (say, an RFK, Jr.) could pick off enough Congressional district electoral votes here and there to throw the election to the House? Could this approach grow the traditional “third” parties such as the Libertarians, Green Party, or Constitution Party enough to give them an enlarged political role?

In some respects, Donald Trump is his own third party, although he’s borrowed the Republican Party for the purpose of easy ballot access. There are some areas where the GOP embraces his populism and others where they get together like oil and water. In looking up Ross Perot’s electoral performance for this piece, I found there are a few who argue he paved the way for Donald Trump.

But if you want to ensure the public is behind your mission, wouldn’t it be better to sweep into office with a majority in your party as well? Sure, there will be some ticket-splitting along the way (and this really does nothing to stop it, aside from forcing states to report Presidential election totals by Congressional district as well) but I think it will engage more people in most of the states heretofore presumed to be lost causes for their chosen party. It also provides an avenue for that elusive third party that the public seems to be clamoring for but wouldn’t “waste” their vote on to secure a role. And lastly, this approach makes it harder to steal an election since you can’t just dump a lot of phony votes into an urban area to snatch a statewide win - now it just affects two electoral votes instead of a dozen or more.

I think Nebraska and Maine have the right idea as trendsetters. Unfortunately, the duopoly is too strong everywhere else to give a good idea a chance and people more choices.

Until next time, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.