Making the case on one idea only

Blue dot signs and red state signs are popping up in the 2nd Congressional District, sometimes with both signs dueling in neighboring yards. (Cate Folsom/Nebraska Examiner)

Nebraska's recent blue dot debate was not exactly about voter suppression. You could see it from there, however. Changing how Nebraskans divvy up their Electoral College votes is more akin to voter devaluation.

I refer, of course, to the eleventh-hour pitch from a handful of Nebraska state senators, Gov. Jim Pillen, former President Donald Trump and none other than the likes of South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. All but the former president mustered in the governor's mansion to plan just how they could make Nebraska a winner-take-all state, the mostly Omaha 2nd Congressional District's blue dot the target of their machinations. By then oddsmakers were calculating just what it might take for Pillen to call a second special session of the Legislature this year, the first an expensive ho-hummer of an assembly.

Thankfully, enough reasonable state senators saw the ploy for what it was: The devaluing of votes in the state's 2nd Congressional District in the GOP's hopes of one more Electoral College vote in what's billed as a close presidential race.

The focus was on the role of State Sen. Mike McDonnell, a recent GOP convert, who politely declined (at this time) to sign on to the thin, specious argument that Nebraska should get in step with the rest of the country. That, of course, would mean all five of the state's Electoral College votes would go to the presidential candidate who tallied the most popular votes.

You remember the Electoral College, that clunky, dubious relic of representative government history. While the argument that we need to do away with the Electoral College altogether is another subject for another commentary, a brief history of its origins reveals a tethering to slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise. Even Broadway's "Hamilton," with its "ten-dollar Founding Father" lyrics, broaches the why of the Electoral College.

I digress. At hand is whether Nebraska should continue to be one of two states that split their Electoral College votes by congressional district. We've done that for the last eight presidential elections. Twice, in 2016 and 2020, reliably red Nebraska did indeed have a blue dot beaming on the tote board.

So taken with the idea of making it a third time, a good number of voters in the district are planting blue dot signs in their yards. In response, others are putting up signs sporting red maps of Nebraska. The competition — which in a democracy is not just a thing, it is the thing — presages what could be a massive turnout.

That's good because at the heart of the argument against the current system is an unwillingness to win an election on the merits of your case and your visions, but rather on election mechanics or, in some states, gerrymandered maps. Politics is the art and science of convincing a voter that your character, demeanor, experience, record, policy proposals and vision are better than your opponent's.

We're straying from that premise, however. We spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to change the rules ... as in moving Nebraska to a winner-take-all state. Or, as we've watched for several years now, trafficking in convoluted and unfounded charges of election rigging, going farther and farther down conspiratorial rabbit holes.

One of the enduring images of the 2024 election season will be of Wausau, Wis., Mayor John Diny, wheeling away the city's only ballot drop box on a dolly outside Wausau City Hall. Wausau is a city of about 40,000 in north-central Wisconsin. The state allows local communities to decide whether or not to use drop boxes.

Nevertheless, Diny, a Republican, was acting on his own, determined to change the election not by a better policy or a clearer vision or even an unimpeachable life of moral virtue but rather by an evidence-free nose-thumbing at a couple democratic processes. Diny's dollying was devious ... and potentially illegal. The county's district attorney has asked the Wisconsin Department of Justice to open an official investigation of Diny.

Dodgy forces have altered the lay of today's political landscape. We can reminisce about past elections, tell ourselves they were about ideas and persuasion. I do sometimes, even though today most politics is about winning rather than governing. Still, our wont to recalibrate the voting process — either before or after the count — is a bad look for a democracy.

To wit: One state senator in the mansion meeting has vowed to introduce legislation in the next regular session to permanently ground the rising blue dot.

Which makes one wonder if that's the only idea they have.