Maine and Nebraska to Go War Over Electoral Votes

There’s a war breaking out between the states.

It’s not a war over book bans or abortion but a war over the way certain states allocate their electoral college votes.

For years now, Maine and Nebraska have sat in their own unique club. Rather than allocate all their electoral college votes to the presidential winner of their respective states, votes are awarded based on winning congressional districts.

In deep-red Nebraska, for example, this means most of the state is voting Republican except for the urban area around Omaha. As a result, out of the state’s five electoral college votes, four tend to go to the Republican and one to the Democrat. The situation in Maine is basically reversed with the Democrat usually taking three out of four electoral college votes.

Well, the Nebraska legislature is aiming to make a change, and Maine is none too happy about it, according to Politico:

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.

What does it matter, you say? It’s only a change of one or maybe two votes simply swapping back and forth. Well, for the simplest Biden path to re-election, it could be the difference between winning in 2024 or heading back to the ice cream shop for retirement:

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.

Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That reaction is coming from the state of Maine:

“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 seems somewhat unlikely that either state will end up making a change this year. For starters, both of their legislative sessions have ended meaning the respective governors would have to drag legislators back in from their upcoming summer vacations to debate this thorny issue.

Furthermore, if Nebraska makes a change as does Maine, it would be meaningless in the end. Nebraska would give one vote back to Trump while Maine would give one vote back to Biden, essentially a wash.

For now, it seems that the unique and perhaps meaningless way Nebraska and Maine divvy up electoral votes based on congressional district will remain in 2024.