Nebraska lawmakers advanced legislation Monday that would create a winner-take-all system for presidential elections and leave Maine as the only state in the country to award Electoral College votes by congressional district.
A similar effort last year in Republican-led Nebraska moved forward rapidly thanks to support from President Donald Trump while he was on the campaign trail but ran out of steam ahead of the November election that Trump ended up winning over former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Former Maine House Majority Leader Mo Terry, D-Gorham, said last year the Democratic-controlled Legislature would have been “compelled” to act if Nebraska made a switch, but Maine legislators on both sides of the aisle have not endorsed that.
Still, a legislative committee in Nebraska advanced a revived proposal Monday that would change the state to a winner-take-all system and a separate measure that would let Nebraska voters decide on altering how their state awards Electoral College votes. It is not yet clear when Nebraska’s unicameral legislature will take more votes amid an expected Democratic filibuster, but Republican Gov. Jim Pillen called Monday’s committee vote “great news for Nebraska.”
Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that award Electoral College votes by congressional district. Maine, with two districts and four electoral votes, became the first state nationally under a 1969 law to adopt that system. Nebraska, with three districts and five votes, made a similar move in 1991 in a bid to attract more attention from presidential candidates.
National conservatives and Trump urged Nebraska to switch its system ahead of last year’s election in a nod to how an Omaha-area district has gone to the Democratic presidential candidate in several elections. Trump and his allies felt a change would help him in a tight election, but a Republican senator from Omaha helped quash that effort last September when he expressed opposition to making such a change only about 40 days before the election.
A change to Nebraska’s system would also not have mattered, as Trump ended up beating Harris by a 312-226 margin in the Electoral College count. Harris won the Omaha-area district while Trump carried the rest of the state. In Maine, Harris won the 1st District and the statewide vote, while Trump carried the rural 2nd District.
Nebraska’s next steps could affect Maine, even if lawmakers here prefer the status quo. Maine Democratic Party Chair Charlie Dingman said Monday the party does not have an official position on the matter, and he otherwise focused on whether the U.S. Constitution should be amended to allow for a national popular vote.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, let a proposal become law without her signature last spring to put Maine in an interstate compact seeking to elect presidents by a national popular vote. The interstate compact currently includes 17 states with 209 votes and still needs states with an additional 61 electoral votes to join it in order for it to take effect.
“The Electoral College is an artifact of an earlier era, and I doubt that tinkering with how each state chooses its electors — which they all could do theoretically — will result in any meaningful reform,” Dingman said.
