Why is Maine and Alaska allowed to divide their Electoral votes?
by 
Ed the Jetpacking Headbanger
ANSWERS: 4
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Each state was allowed to decide how the electors were chosen. All states except for Maine and Nebraska chose an all or nothing system. In the case of Maine and Nebraska, they use a tiered system where a single elector is chosen within each Congressional district and two electors are chosen by statewide popular vote.
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We're special!! LOL
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Maine and Nebraska both use an alternative method of distributing their electoral votes, called the Congressional District Method. Currently, these two states are the only two in the union that diverge from the traditional winner-take-all method of electoral vote allocation. With the district method, a state divides itself into a number of districts, allocating one of its state-wide electoral votes to each district. The winner of each district is awarded that district’s electoral vote, and the winner of the state-wide vote is then awarded the state’s remaining two electoral votes. This method has been used in Maine since 1972 and Nebraska since 1996, though since both states have adopted this modification, the statewide winners have consistently swept all of the state’s districts as well. Consequently, neither state has ever split its electoral votes.
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It is more a question of why the others are allowed *not* to split their vote. The Constitution predating political parties, I think that the original intention was that each community, in a general sense, should choose a wise man to attend the electoral convention. Which means that the logical thing, when parties came along, would be to split the delegation "fairly" between the parties. But the small states bundled their votes to make them a big enough bundle to get the candidates to visit them (five EC votes are worth fighting for, three instead of two is much less so). The big states then followed suit. The system remains because it seems to work. A system that forces candidates to visit every state in the union, and generates as much interest as this election, ain't broke.
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