Lindsey Graham visits Nebraska to urge winner-take-all vote Emergency USA

Gov. Jim Pillen invited conservative state lawmakers to lunch Wednesday at the governor’s mansion, where Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina became the latest national political figure to push for the change, multiple lawmakers and a spokeswoman for Graham’s office confirmed.

His visit came months after both Pillen and Trump called in April for state lawmakers to replace the system that has allowed Democrats to pick up a single electoral vote in Nebraska twice since lawmakers implemented the system in 1992.

Under the system, which is also used in Maine, two of Nebraska’s five electoral votes are awarded to the presidential ticket that wins the most votes statewide while the other three go to the winner of each of the state’s three congressional districts.

The system has made a national battleground out of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha, the state’s most populous city. Joe Biden and Barack Obama won the district in 2020 and 2008, respectively, while Trump won the district in 2016 and Mitt Romney won it in 2012.

The latest push by conservatives to replace the system with the winner-take-all model used in 48 other states began in April, when a right-wing radio show host made a social media post highlighting a potential scenario in which Nebraska’s decades-old election system could cost Trump the presidency in November.

In his visit this week, Graham highlighted the close nature of November’s matchup between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, said state Sen. Loren Lippincott, a conservative from Central City who introduced a bill last year to implement the winner-take-all system in Nebraska.

“Jim Pillen, our governor, did invite Lindsey Graham to come and shed light on the gravity of the upcoming election,” Lippincott said in a phone interview Thursday, calling the meeting between lawmakers, Graham and the governor a “status briefing” on the state of the race for the White House.

“He wanted to ensure that Nebraska knew that every single electoral vote was important,” Lippincott said.

Lippincott and Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon both said Thursday that Graham’s visit did not appear to have increased support for winner-take-all among lawmakers, who had conceded in April that it was “procedurally impossible” to make the legislation law in the waning days of the legislative session after one procedural motion that could have cleared the way for the change was voted down.

But pressure continues to mount.

Hours after Graham’s visit, Nebraska’s congressional delegation — made up of five Republicans — penned a letter Wednesday to Pillen and Sen. John Arch of La Vista, the speaker of the Legislature, urging them to work to implement the winner-take-all system.

Led by Republican Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, the delegation wrote that it “is past time that Nebraska join 48 states in embracing winner-take-all in presidential elections.”

Pillen, whose office did not respond to a request for comment Thursday, said in a statement last week that he is “willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election” — but only after a filibuster proof majority of lawmakers publicly endorse the change.

It would take the support of 33 of the 49 lawmakers in Nebraska’s formally nonpartisan, single-house Legislature for winner-take-all legislation to overcome an inevitable filibuster.

“Right now, we’re approximately two — maybe three — votes short of those 33 votes,” Lippincott said. “And our meeting on (Wednesday) did not really move the needle.”

Brewer, the conservative chairman of the Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee — where Lippincott’s bill stalled last year — offered a similar assessment Thursday in an interview at the Capitol.

“I appreciate the fact that (Graham) came all the way here I think, but I don’t know. I think it’s gonna be a hard push,” Brewer said. “I think the governor is trying to do his best to shape the fight, but I just fear that it’s too late in the game right now. I think we’re gonna end up short in the end.”

Conservatives hold 33 of the 49 seats in the Legislature — a filibuster-proof majority when they vote in lockstep. But Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha, who switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican in April, remained opposed to the winner-take-all model even after changing parties.

McDonnell’s office did not return a phone call seeking comment Thursday.

Brewer said Thursday that McDonnell “is a man of his word and has always been,” adding that the Omaha lawmaker is “not one of these guys that’s wishy-washy.”

Republicans may have a short window to change his mind. Lippincott said a change to the state’s voting system would need to take place before Nebraskans begin casting votes in November’s election.

Early voting ballots will be mailed out starting Sept. 30. Ballots will be sent to Nebraskans abroad as early as this week. A spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office, though, said only that a change to Nebraska’s voting system would have to take effect before Nov. 5 — Election Day.

If Pillen called a special session to take up the legislation, it would face intense opposition from Democrats in the Legislature, who signaled plans to kill a bipartisan Christmas-tree package of legislation in April when conservatives moved to attach a winner-take-all amendment to the bill.

Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, a civil rights attorney and the former head of the ACLU of Nebraska, said Thursday that the latest push for the change from out-of-state partisan actors is “insulting” — and an indication of the unpopularity of the GOP’s platform.

Conrad called the push “an admission that they don’t think their candidate can earn the votes of Nebraskans under current law with their ideas and personal attributes so they have to change the rules at the last second to silence voters in Nebraska and make our system less responsive and less representative.”

Though a change to the state’s presidential electoral system would undoubtedly ensure that Trump, who won more than 58% of the vote statewide in 2020, would bag all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes, the move may actually boost Democrats down the ballot.

In a memo sent to funding allies last month, the Open Democracy PAC, backed by progressive donors, predicted the move would prompt Trump’s campaign to abandon Omaha altogether — giving an immediate fundraising edge to Democrat Tony Vargas in his bid to unseat Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.

Conservatives would also risk “strong electoral backlash,” the PAC warned, citing polling that suggested more than half of Omaha voters surveyed indicated they would be less likely to vote for candidates they otherwise agree with if the candidates supported the change.

In the memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Journal Star, the PAC also predicted that Democrats in the district would be “energized and motivated” to vote for Vargas if state lawmakers strip the district of its electoral vote before the election.

The PAC asked fundraising allies to “consider reserving resources to take advantage of this opportunity should it arise,” according to the memo.