In Nebraska on Tuesday, two dozen state senators met with Gov. Jim Pillen as a part of what would be the cycle’s very unlikely scheme to avoid wasting Donald Trump. The plot drew in Trump’s most sycophantic sycophant, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and is a part of a nationwide effort to steal away only one potential electoral vote from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Not like most states, Nebraska doesn’t award all its electoral votes to the candidate who takes probably the most votes within the state. As a substitute, it awards two votes to the state’s popular-vote winner after which one to the winner of every of its three congressional districts. Nebraska has been that means since 1991, when a Nebraska state senator heard concerning the concept, thought it sounded fairer than the winner-take-all strategy, and was “jazzed” sufficient to draft laws that narrowly handed the Nebraska legislature.
Now Republicans try to alter these guidelines on the final minute in hopes that it will snatch victory from Harris and restore Trump to the White Home. However not solely is that this extraordinarily unlikely to make a distinction within the total race, it could set off a ready lure that may price Trump not less than as a lot as he gained.
The concept that the election may swing a single electoral vote relies on a specific line of reasoning: What if Kamala Harris doesn’t win any southern or western swing state that Joe Biden picked up in 2020 (Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada), whereas North Carolina stays within the purple column and Harris makes a sweep of the northern industrial states?
Democrats have twice (2008 and 2020) picked up the “blue dot” of Nebraska’s 2nd District that covers Omaha and surrounding parts of two counties. However each of these elections would have been stable Democratic victories even with out the rogue Nebraska electoral vote.
Nonetheless, the concept of the blue dot making a distinction is just not completely unattainable.
All that provides to 270, sufficient to place Harris on the inaugural stage … however provided that she additionally secures that little blue dot.
Democrats really feel fairly optimistic that the Omaha dot will probably be blue as soon as once more. Republicans are afraid they’re proper. So whereas the “Blue Wall and Nothing Else” situation could also be extraordinarily unlikely, they don’t need to take the prospect. Which is why Graham was there to share Trump’s needs with Pillen and the state senators on Wednesday.
They need that dot.
The hassle to grab away Omaha’s vote was bolstered earlier within the 12 months when a state senator made his personal flip from Democrat to Republican and introduced that he would assist a winner-take-all resolution … or promised to oppose it. It relies on whom he spoke to final. However the stress is certainly on from Washington, with the Republican members of Nebraska’s U.S. Home delegation sending a letter to state legislators urging them to squash the dot.
Nevertheless, not solely is it extraordinarily unlikely the election comes down to at least one electoral vote, but additionally all of the efforts to alter Nebraska’s system are in all probability pointless within the first place.
That’s as a result of the state senator who introduced this concept to Nebraska again in 1991 received the concept from one other state that had already cut up the vote: Maine. And if Nebraska decides to slide their system again to winner-take-all, Maine Home Majority Chief Maureen Terry has promised that the Pine Tree State has promised to observe swimsuit.
“If Nebraska’s Republican governor and Republican-controlled Legislature were to change their electoral system this late in the cycle in order to unfairly award Donald Trump an additional electoral vote,” Terry wrote in a press release to the Nebraska Examiner, “I think the Maine Legislature would be compelled to act.”
This issues as a result of Maine has a dependable little purple dot—a single rural Maine electoral vote, which Trump picked up in 2016 and 2020.
Flipping Maine to winner-take-all can be extra sure to take some extent away from Trump than altering Nebraska can be to take some extent from Harris. The newest Maine polling reveals Trump main Harris 49% to 42% in Maine’s 2nd District, however Harris with a 50% to 41% benefit statewide.
That Republicans are working so exhausting to push change in Nebraska is an actual signal of Trump’s desperation. Nevertheless it’s not an actual risk to Harris’ election.
