Crossposted on Mediafuturenow.com
Randall Lane wrote a provocative piece in Monday’s New York Times suggesting a “ballot buddy system” among the states to permit apportioning of electoral votes among counties or congressional districts. The idea seems like one of those suggestions likely to go nowhere, except when you realize that (a) 2 states (Maine and Nebraska) have already moved in that direction, (b) the 2000 election may have permanently disencumbered any remaining pillars of the infallibility of the electoral college system and (c) the Obama campaign’s social media breakthroughs may have demonstrated the irrelevance of the system in the first place.
(Full disclosure: Lane’s current company, Doubledown Media, is a corporate law client of my law firm.)
In “A Ballot Buddy System”, Lane argues that the big win for deconstructing the electoral college was vividly illustrated in Nebraska, where Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin both campaigned in Omaha in the last weeks of the 2008 campaign – something not otherwise thought likely for an otherwise reliably red state. When counties are in play, versus whole states, “winner takes all”, a different campaign dynamic kicks in. (more…)
