If Oregon goes to Gore, and Florida to Bush, Bush would nominally win the electoral college by 271-269.
However, weren’t several Dopers discussing that there are two states (IIRC West Virginia and Nebraska) that allow their electoral college members to split up their votes? I guess before, it hasn’t really mattered, but now…(especially as WV and NB both went for Bush–it would only take two votes from those two states to swing it to Gore).
[sub]I’m not going to suggest anything, but if you electoral college members are listening, you could write your name down in history forever by tweaking the results…[/sub]
States that do not follow winner take all are Maine and Nebraska. Maine went all to Gore, Nebraska went all to Bush.
Many states have laws that say you can’t vote another way if you are a electoral college elector. And electors are selected by loyal party hacks so they all are under the pressure to vote the way their state is going. There were a few (very few) faithless elector in US history but they usually were electors whose candidate was losing badly.
It might be an interesting idea if we redid the rules so that each elector was awarded proportionally, or by congressional district (each which is roughly equal in population) and 2 being at-large, like the Senate.