A high ally of Donald Trump is pushing Nebraska Republicans to award all of their state’s Electoral College votes to the state winner, a late-stage guidelines change that would doubtlessly assist Trump return to the White House.
Nebraska and Maine are the one states that divide their electoral votes by congressional district, and each have completed so in current presidential elections. In solidly Republican Nebraska, which means one of many state’s 5 votes is aggressive for Democrats.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-C., lately met with Republican lawmakers within the state to encourage them to make a change supported by the state’s all-Republican congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Jim Pillen. The change was mentioned earlier this yr however did not get the votes to cross. Now, with Trump locked in a good race in opposition to Democrat Kamala Harris, the place each electoral vote counts, his allies are giving it one other attempt.
“To my associates in Nebraska, that electoral vote might be the distinction between Harris turning into president or not, and he or she is a catastrophe for Nebraska and the world,” Graham stated Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump’s allies have been Calling Nebraska Republicans for months to make a change regardless of an absence of help within the state legislature. But there’s a brand new urgency to their push with lower than 50 days to go till the election and Trump and Harris locked in a good race on a number of battlegrounds.
There is a believable situation during which the election will find yourself being determined by voters in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, a swing district within the Omaha space.
This yr, if Harris wins the three so-called blue wall battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, whereas Trump wins the 4 Sun Belt battlegrounds of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, the outcome could be a 269-268 Electoral College break up in Harris’s favor.
The 2nd District of Nebraska, which has chosen President Joe Biden 4 years in the past, may give Harris the decisive 270th electoral vote. Or, if Trump wins, the election would finish in a 269-269 tie. In that situation, the president could be chosen by the House of Representatives, with every state delegation getting a single vote, a situation that favors the previous president.
The 5 Republicans who characterize Nebraska in Congress urged their colleagues within the state to vary the regulation in a letter dated Wednesday, saying that “the state ought to converse with a united voice in presidential elections.”
Any legislative change would require Pillen, the governor, to name lawmakers right into a particular session. He stated in a press release that he would accomplish that “enthusiastically” if he obtained a “clear and public indication” that there have been 33 votes in favor, the minimal wanted to cross Nebraska’s single chamber of the legislature.
Nebraska Democrats have begun displaying their help for splitting the state’s electoral votes with marketing campaign indicators that includes a blue dot on a white background, symbolizing their potential position of the Omaha metropolitan district as an island of blue surrounded by Republican purple in the remainder of Nebraska.
Republicans at present management 33 seats within the legislature, however they don’t seem to be united of their help. One of these Republicans, state Sen. Mike McDonald, lately switched events, however he nonetheless represents a district that features Democrats who may punish him for supporting a change within the Electoral College.
The system has lengthy baffled Republicans, who’ve been unable to drive the state right into a winner-take-all system since Barack Obama turned the primary presidential candidate to steal one of many state’s 5 electoral votes in 2008. Biden was the one different Democrat to seize Nebraska’s 2nd District electoral vote in 2020.
