A high Donald Trump ally is pressuring Nebraska Republicans to award all of their state’s Electoral Faculty votes to the statewide winner, a late-stage rule change that would doubtlessly assist return Trump to the White Home.
Nebraska and Maine are the one states that cut up their electoral votes by congressional district, and each have finished so in latest presidential elections. In Nebraska, which is solidly Republican, meaning one of many state’s 5 votes is aggressive for Democrats.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., met lately with GOP 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 12 months however lacked the votes to move. Now, with Trump in a particularly shut race in opposition to Democrat Kamala Harris the place each electoral vote issues, his allies are making one other push.
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“To my mates in Nebraska, that one electoral vote might be the distinction between Harris being president and never, and she or he’s a catastrophe for Nebraska and the world,” Graham stated Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Trump’s allies have been calling on Nebraska Republicans for months to make a change regardless of a scarcity of vital assist within the state legislature. However there’s new urgency to their push with fewer than 50 days till the election and Trump and Harris locked in a decent race throughout a number of battlegrounds.
There’s a believable state of affairs the place the election finally ends up being determined by the voters in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, a swing district within the Omaha space.
This 12 months, if Harris wins the three so-called blue wall battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania whereas Trump wins the 4 Solar Belt battlegrounds of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, the outcome could be a 269-268 cut up within the Electoral Faculty in favor of Harris.
Nebraska’s 2nd District, which went for President Joe Biden 4 years in the past, may give Harris the decisive 270th electoral vote. Or, if Trump have been to win, the election would finish in a 269-269 tie. In that state of affairs, the president could be chosen by the Home of Representatives, with every state’s delegation getting a single vote — a state of affairs 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 “the state ought to converse with a united voice in presidential elections.”
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Any legislative change would require Pillen, the governor, to name lawmakers right into a particular session. He stated in an announcement he would “enthusiastically” achieve this if he will get a “clear and public indication” that there are 33 votes in favor, the minimal essential to move in Nebraska’s single legislative chamber.
Nebraska Democrats have began displaying assist for the state’s electoral vote cut up with yard indicators displaying a blue dot on a white background, symbolizing their potential position of the metro Omaha district as an island of blue surrounded by Republican crimson in the remainder of Nebraska.
Republicans at the moment management 33 seats within the Legislature however they aren’t united in assist. A kind of Republicans, state Sen. Mike McDonald, lately switched events however nonetheless represents a district that features Democrats who may punish him for backing an Electoral Faculty change.
The system has lengthy confounded Republicans, who’ve been unable to drive the state right into a winner-take-all system since Barack Obama grew to become the primary presidential contender to shave off one of many state’s 5 electoral votes in 2008. Biden in 2020 was the one different Democrat to seize Nebraska’s 2nd District electoral vote.
