With only months to go before what is shaping up to be a hotly contested presidential election, Nebraska’s Republican governor is calling on state lawmakers to move forward with a “winner-take-all” system of awarding Electoral College votes.
Nebraska and Maine are the only states that split their electoral votes by congressional district, and both have done so in recent presidential elections. Lawmakers have also made moves to switch to a winner-take-all system and have found themselves frustrated in that effort.
“It would bring Nebraska into line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” Gov. Jim Pillen said in a written statement Tuesday. “I call upon fellow Republicans in the Legislature to pass this bill to my desk so I can sign it into law.”
Pillen’s stance was hailed by former President Donald Trump, who used a social media post to encourage Republican lawmakers there to “do the right thing.” Barack Obama became the first presidential contender to shave off one of the state’s five electoral votes in 2008. It happened again in 2020, when President Joe Biden captured Nebraska’s 2nd District electoral vote.
In 2016, one of Maine’s four electoral votes from its 2nd District went to Trump. Most Republicans here stand opposed to an effort that would ditch a split system and instead join a multistate compact that would allocate all its electoral votes to whoever wins the national popular vote for president — even if that conflicts with Maine’s popular vote for president.
It passed the Maine House of Representatives in a likely deciding vote on Tuesday. Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills has not said whether she’ll sign that bill, a spokesperson underscored Wednesday. But even if the measure were to receive final approval in the Maine Senate and be signed by Mills, it would be on hold until other states approve the compact.
Maine was the first state to adopt such a system in 1969. It passed a year after a presidential election in which the state’s preferred candidate, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, lost to Republican Richard Nixon in part due to a split with segregationist candidate George Wallace.
Then-Gov. Ken Curtis, a Democrat, allowed the measure to pass without his signature in an attempt to push the nation toward a popular vote. That did not happen, but Nebraska followed Maine in 1991 while seeking to attract more attention from White House candidates.
Since then, Republicans have won two of the five presidential elections in U.S. history in which the winning candidate lost the popular vote, including Trump in 2016. They have generally defended the current system, while many Democrats favor a popular vote.
In Nebraska, Republicans have faced hurdles in changing the current system, largely because the state’s unique one-chamber Legislature requires 33 votes to get any contested bill to passage. Republicans in the officially nonpartisan Legislature only hold 32 seats right now.
Despite Pillen’s call to pass a winner-take-all change, it seems unlikely that Nebraska lawmakers would have time to get the bill out of committee, much less advance it through three rounds of debate with just six days left in the current session. Some Nebraska lawmakers acknowledged as much.
“Reporting live from the trenches — don’t worry, we aren’t getting rid of our unique electoral system in Nebraska,” Sen. Megan Hunt posted on X late Tuesday. “Legislatively there’s just no time. Nothing to worry about this year.”
Neither Nebraska Speaker of the Legislature Sen. John Arch nor Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the committee in which the bill sits, immediately returned phone and email messages seeking comment on whether they will seek to try to pass the bill yet this year.
Associated Press writer David Sharp and BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
