Power Play in Nebraska

Trump’s Electoral College Power Play in Nebraska Is a Troubling Sign of Things to Come

He’s already pressuring lawmakers to change the rules in his favor. Imagine if he loses.

Tim Murphy

In the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden was buoyed by victories in the “blue wall” states of the Upper Midwest, and a few narrow wins in the South and Southwest. But it was easy to forget that he also picked up another electoral vote in a state where Democrats had been shut out since 2008—Nebraska, a reliably red state that has apportioned its electors by congressional district since 1992. The second district, which includes much of Omaha, is an electoral-college curiosity that was offset by Trump’s victory in the second congressional district of Maine—a reliably blue state that also splits its electoral votes.

This year is different. Thanks to reapportionment following the 2020 census, winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania would only get Kamala Harris to 269 electoral votes—an Electoral College tie—and not 270. And because an Electoral College deadlock would be broken by a House of Representative roll-call in which each state delegation gets one vote, an Electoral College tie is effectively an Electoral College loss for Democrats. A win in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina would still put Harris over the top, but the easiest path to 270 is simply to hold onto what Nebraskans refer to as “the blue dot.” Which is why this time, Republicans aren’t satisfied with Nebraska and Maine canceling each other out; they are currently trying to change the rules at the last minute to take Omaha’s vote for themselves.

Trump supporters, and his campaign itself, have been talking about changing Nebraska’s rules for a while. Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk held a rally in the second district earlier this year to try to pressure the legislature to make a change, and Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita said at the Republican National Convention that he believed the state might still take action. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen has signaled his openness to calling a special session if Republicans in the unicameral legislature can prove they have the votes. But this largely theoretical exercise took on a more concrete tone this week, after NBC News reported South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham had traveled to Nebraska on behalf of the Trump campaign to lobby Republican lawmakers on the matter. And according to the Washington Post, Trump himself spoke with a Republican state senator by phone during the meeting to make his case directly.

This might seem a little late in the game to make such a major change to the Electoral College, but that’s the point: This is only happening because it’s so late in the game that Maine, because of its own state laws, can no longer change its own rules in response. It’s hard to come up with any justification for the Electoral College in the year 2024, but the Nebraska gambit makes a mockery of an already broken and deeply undemocratic system.

It’s hardly a done deal. Pillen has said he won’t call a special session unless legislators demonstrate they have a filibuster-proof majority, and as Nebraska Democrats have pointed out, they don’t have the votes right now. According to the Nebraska Examiner, there’s at least one key holdout with a conflicting professional interest—Republican state Sen. Mike McDonnell, a former Democrat who is reportedly considering running for mayor of Omaha next year. He might want to avoid being known in Omaha as the guy who made Omaha irrelevant. In one of the world’s least reassuring statements, a spokesperson told the Examiner Thursday that McDonnell was opposed to any change “as of today.”

Whether Nebraska changes the rules or not, though, Graham’s gambit, and the pressure from the Trump campaign, offers an ominous glimpse of a future that looks a lot like the recent past. One of the dominant storylines following Trump’s loss in the 2020 election was the pressure campaign he and his allies mounted on individual Republican officeholders all the way up until January 6. Trump, for instance, invited Michigan Republican lawmakers to the White House and called Republicans in Wayne County to try to pressure them to oppose the certification of Detroit’s election results. He asked Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in a phone call to “find” a few thousand votes that would put him over the top. Graham, as it happens, also talked to Raffensperger after the election, in a conversation that the election official considered part of a pressure campaign. (Graham denied any ill intention and was investigated but not charged by the Fulton County District Attorney’s office as part of its probe of 2020 election interference.) I don’t think I need to get into how Trump pressured Mike Pence. 

This is what November and December will look like if Trump loses at the ballot box: a drumbeat of urgent phone calls with Republicans lawmakers and officeholders in which the Republican candidate tries to cajole them into enabling his desired outcome, whether through legal or extra-legal means. If he doesn’t have the votes on Election Day, he will simply try to “find” them—in legislatures, on boards of supervisors, and in judges’ chambers. 

Then again, if Trump does get his way in Lincoln, it just might mean he never has to do any of that.