It sounds like the initial vote was 3-2 against Obama, so I guess they had to keep voting until they got it “right”.

Three of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee had objections to the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to US President Barack Obama, the Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang (VG) reported Thursday.

“VG has spoken to a number of sources who confirmed the impression that a majority of the Nobel committee, at first, had not decided to give the peace prize to Barack Obama,” the newspaper said.

The article goes on to report that the panel members have ties to parties but are not members of parliament.

“The committee was unanimous,” its influential secretary Geir Lundestad told AFP on Friday.

But Inger-Marie Ytterhorn, who represented the right-wing populist Progress Party on the committee, led the way in objecting to the choice of Obama because she questioned his ability to keep his promises, the newspaper said.

It also said the representative of the Conservative Party, Kaci Kullmann Five, and Aagot Valle, the representative of the Socialist Left, had objections.

The choice for Obama was however strongly supported by committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland and Sissel Roenbeck, both representatives of the Labour Party.

So it sounds like the two Labour Party folks decided he was getting it and did whatever it took to get the skeptics to go along. You have to wonder what the initial reservation of the Socialist Left member was about – seems like she would have been in the bag for Obama from the start.