Trump’s Allies Try to Revive Push to Make Nebraska Winner-Take-All Electorally

Trump’s Allies Try to Revive Push to Make Nebraska Winner-Take-All Electorally

Nebraska could deliver a critical electoral vote to Vice President Kamala Harris under its hybrid system of splitting votes in an otherwise red state.

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By Neil Vigdor and Reid J. Epstein

Former President Donald J. Trump’s allies are resurrecting efforts to change how Nebraska awards its five electoral votes, a hybrid system that could deliver a single but decisive vote to Vice President Kamala Harris from a reliable red state in one tiebreaking scenario.

With less than seven weeks until the election, all five Republicans who represent the state in Congress are pushing for Nebraska to return to a winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes that had been used before 1992 and was based on the statewide popular vote.

Under the state’s current hybrid system, its electoral votes are split: Two go to the winner of the statewide popular vote, and the other three are based on who wins the popular vote in each of Nebraska’s three U.S. House districts. Maine also has a hybrid system.

In 2016, Mr. Trump secured all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes, but he was denied a sweep in 2020 when President Biden won the popular vote in the Second District, which includes Omaha, the state’s most populous city. The area, which has become known in Nebraska as the “blue dot,” is near where Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, was born.

Bracing for a close election, Mr. Trump’s allies are trying again to blot out the “blue dot” — which, in a close race, could play an outsize role — after their previous efforts stalled.

If Mr. Trump flips Arizona, Georgia and Nevada, states won by Mr. Biden in 2020, there is still a pathway for Ms. Harris to win the presidency by holding onto the other states that Mr. Biden won, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Under that scenario, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump would each end up with 269 electoral votes, one short of the 270 needed to win the presidency. A victory in Nebraska’s Second District for Ms. Harris could break that tie. Otherwise, the House of Representatives would break the tie, with each state delegation getting one vote, giving Republicans the advantage.

In a letter sent on Wednesday to the governor and the State Legislature’s speaker, who are both Republicans, the group called for an end to the hybrid system.

“It is past time that Nebraska join 48 other states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections,” the group wrote in the letter.

Also on Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, visited Nebraska, where he too advocated for the state to change its rules.

Representatives for Mr. Graham, who The Nebraska Examiner reported had visited the governor’s mansion, did not respond to requests for comment. When he was asked by reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday about his trip to Nebraska, he said that the Trump campaign had not dispatched him to make the case for the winner-take-all system.

“Trump’s going to win the state by 20 points,” Mr. Graham said, according to CBS News.

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment. The Harris-Walz campaign did not immediately provide a comment.

Changing the state’s system of awarding electoral votes would require a special session of the Legislature, a unicameral body that is officially nonpartisan but is controlled by Republicans.

Carol Blood, a Democratic state senator who is running for Congress in the First District, criticized the push, saying on Thursday that its timing was suspect and that a winner-take-all system would make Nebraska less relevant on the national political map.

“The blue dot is what keeps Nebraska from being a flyover state,” said Ms. Blood, who lost an open-seat race for governor in 2022 to Jim Pillen, a Republican.

Representatives for Mr. Pillen did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

In a statement last week, the governor declared his support for awarding all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes to the winner of the statewide popular vote.

“As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election,” Mr. Pillen said. “However, I must receive clear and public indication that 33 senators are willing to vote in such a session to restore winner-take-all.”

Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator who was a Democrat until earlier this year, has emerged as a potential swing vote in the process, according to reports in Nebraska. When he changed parties in April, he said that he opposed a winner-take-all system.

Barry Rubin, a spokesman for Mr. McDonnell, told The Nebraska Examiner on Thursday, “Senator McDonnell has heard compelling arguments from both sides,” adding, “And, as of today, (he) is still a no.”

Mr. McDonnell did not respond to a request for comment from The New York Times.