If Nebraska moves

Maine Dems say they’ll consider cutting off Trump’s path, if Nebraska moves to hurt Biden

Converting the state’s electoral votes to winner-take-all would likely erase any gains Trump would make in Nebraska.

By SAM STEIN

If Nebraska Republicans changed their electoral college rules to help Donald Trump this November, a top Maine Democrat said her party would try to do a similar move to counteract the impact.

The state House majority leader, Maureen Terry, said in a statement on Friday that the Democratic-controlled Legislature would “be compelled to act in order to restore fairness,” should Nebraska’s Republican governor sign legislation that made the state a winner-take-all election in 2024.

Currently, both Maine and Nebraska award a portion of their electoral votes on the basis of which candidate wins individual congressional districts. That structure seems likely to result in Trump winning one Electoral College vote from Maine and Joe Biden winning one from Nebraska this November.

But Nebraska GOP lawmakers have sought to amend their current system in order to cut off the possibility that Biden could, as he did in 2020, earn an electoral college vote by winning the state’s Omaha-district. A bill to turn the state into winner-take-all has languished in the Legislature. But at the encouragement of Trump allies, Gov. Jim Pillen, has endorsed calling a special session to try and push it through. It would still need to pass a Democratic-led filibuster, though the margin is extremely close.

“I am steadfast in my commitment to get winner-take-all over the finish line, thereby honoring our constitutional founding, unifying our state and ending the three-decade-old mistake of allocating Nebraska’s electoral votes differently than all but one other state,” Pillen had said.

Should Nebraska Republicans end up successfully changing the electoral system there, it would close off President Biden’s simplest path to reelection: holding the three “Blue Wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, while also winning Nebraska’s 2nd District, a blue-trending seat based in Omaha. It also would place a spotlight on Maine Democrats to respond in kind by changing their system into a winner-take-all election, depriving Trump of a likely electoral vote there.

Until recently, Democratic lawmakers in the state have not engaged in such a hypothetical. But on Friday, Terry said they would have to consider acting if Nebraska did, too.

“Voters in Maine and voters in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District value their independence, but they also value fairness and playing by the rules,” Terry said. “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, I think the Maine Legislature would be compelled to act in order to restore fairness to our country’s electoral system.”

“It is my hope and the hope of my colleagues in Maine that the Nebraska Republican Party decides not to make this desperate and ill-fated attempt to sway the 2024 election,” she said.

Maine’s Legislature, like Nebraska’s, has already adjourned. So any consideration of such a move would have to come in a special session. And that would require the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, to call lawmakers into one. But Terry’s remark was applauded by national Democrats.

Mills’ office did not respond to a request for comment.