How Nebraska Republicans could tip the election to Trump

Nebraska Republicans appear poised to make a last-minute change in state election law that could tip the 2024 presidential race to former President Donald Trump.

Nebraska Republican Gov. Jim Pillen met with roughly two dozen GOP state legislators on Wednesday to push for a change to make Nebraska’s Electoral College votes winner-take-all for this election, according to multiple reports. If Republicans make this eleventh-hour change,  it would ensure Mr. Trump another vote in the Electoral College – and create a realistic scenario where that gives him enough support to return to the White House.

Nebraska is one of two states, along with Maine, that allocates one Electoral College vote to the winner of each congressional district. Vice President Kamala Harris is the slight favorite to win the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District, which Mr. Trump would have lost in 2020 by a six-point margin under current district lines.

How Harris might need an extra state, to win 

Currently, Ms. Harris would become president if she carries the district and wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, three highly competitive Rust Belt states where her poll numbers have been a bit better on average than the other battlegrounds. But if Nebraska becomes a winner-take-all state, that means if she wins those three states and loses the rest of the swing states, she and Mr. Trump would be tied in the Electoral College with 269 votes apiece.

If that happens, the election gets thrown to the U.S. House, where each state delegation would get one vote for president – a volatile result in a highly charged political environment. Republicans currently have a majority of delegations in 28 of the 50 states and will likely maintain that edge after the elections, giving them enough votes to hand the White House to their party.

All five members of Nebraska’s all-Republican delegation released a letter on Wednesday calling for the state to change its rules before the 2024 election. “It is past time that Nebraska join 48 other states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections,” the letter states.

Mr. Trump’s campaign has been pushing for this for months, and Trump surrogate and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham flew to Nebraska on Wednesday to join the meeting with Governor Pillen and the GOP state lawmakers, according to reports.

It’s unclear whether Republicans now have enough votes to pass this in their GOP-controlled legislature, however.

Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said she thought the push would fall short.

“They do not have the votes to change the fair electoral system. We are experiencing another round of political theater by Gov. Pillen and the federal delegation,” she told the Monitor in a text message, accusing the Republicans of trying to “change the rules at the last minute because they are afraid of losing.”

Nebraska’s timing – preventing retaliation by Maine?

Nebraska Republicans considered making this change in the spring, but backed off after enough of their members expressed reservations to potentially sink the legislation, and after Democrats who control Maine’s legislature threatened to make the same change in response, likely handing Ms. Harris another electoral vote (Maine’s rural 2nd District leans Republican) and making the changes moot for this election. 

But it appears that Maine Democrats may have missed their window to retaliate: A bill doesn’t become law for 90 days under Maine law, and it’s now less than 50 days until the presidential election and less than 90 days until the Electoral College votes on Dec. 16.