Nebraska legislators on Wednesday night time overwhelmingly declined to vary how the state awards its Electoral Faculty votes to a winner-take-all system.
Shrugging off stress from former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Jim Pillen, who’ve pushed Republicans to maneuver ahead on the difficulty, members of the unicameral State Legislature rejected in bipartisan style an effort to connect a provision that will have made the change to an unrelated invoice. Had it handed, the change might have helped Mr. Trump in his race towards President Biden.
It’s nonetheless attainable that the supply might be hooked up to a different invoice, however there are solely days to go earlier than the legislative session ends.
Nebraska is one in every of two states — the opposite being Maine — that award an electoral vote to the winner of every congressional district, which means it’s attainable for a candidate who loses the state to nonetheless obtain some credit score.
In Nebraska’s case, this implies two electoral votes are awarded to the statewide winner and three are awarded to the district winners. Two of the districts, and the state as a complete, are solidly Republican. However the Second District, in and round Omaha, is a swing district and voted for Mr. Biden in 2020.
In an election as shut as this November’s could also be, that single electoral vote might be decisive. There’s a life like situation — Mr. Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; Mr. Trump wins Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — through which it might make the distinction between a Biden victory and an Electoral Faculty tie.
If that have been to occur, the election can be thrown to the Home of Representatives, and Mr. Trump can be prone to win. A tie can be resolved with every state delegation getting one vote, not by a vote of the complete chamber.
At the very least a number of the Republican opposition on Wednesday was not essentially to the thought of creating Nebraska a winner-take-all state, however to the way in which the measure was introduced up as an modification to an unrelated invoice.
“Attaching that invoice to the one which they tried was procedurally not proper,” Senator Jana Hughes mentioned in an electronic mail on Thursday. “Additionally, the winner-take-all invoice has not been voted out of committee and it doesn’t have a precedence. So it shouldn’t be in a position to be heard in our final 5 days, for my part.”
Requested whether or not he had voted no for substantive or procedural causes, Senator Myron Dorn replied with a single phrase: “Procedural.”