Dem
51
GOP
49
As we noted yesterday, there was an effort, led by state Sen. Loren Lippincott (R-NE), to switch Nebraska to a winner-take-all system for awarding the state's electoral votes. The clear purpose here is to keep Joe Biden from potentially winning the single electoral vote from NE-02, which he did in 2020, and which Barack Obama did in 2008.
Lippincott knew full well that the measure would be filibustered if introduced as a regular bill, and that because of Nebraska's short legislative sessions, time was running out. So, he persuaded his colleague, state Sen. Julie Slama (R), to introduce it as an amendment to LB 1300, which has a bunch of bipartisan proposals from the legislature's Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. The thinking here was that passing LB 1300 was important enough that the state's Democrats (and moderate Republicans?) would swallow hard and accept the change to winner-take-all.
What Lippincott and Slama apparently did not notice is that Nebraska law does not allow "unrelated amendments" to bills. And so, the maneuver did not go well. Either out of respect for the "unrelated amendments" law, or because the members don't favor the switch to winner-take-all, Slama's motion failed, with 36 voting "nay" to 8 voting "yea." In theory, Lippincott could try to resurrect his bill, but what path does he have? He can't get it passed through normal order, and he can't get it passed through parliamentary trickery, and he's only got a couple of days left before the session ends.
So, Nebraska will presumably stick with the current system through the 2024 election. And it's worth noting the subtext here. If you look at the map at the top of the screen, you'll see the polls currently predict a Trump electoral win, with 297 EVs for him compared to 241 for Biden. We don't believe things are actually that lopsided, and clearly Republican Party leaders don't think so either. There's no need to fight over one EV if you believe your candidate has a 20- or 30-electoral-vote margin of error. (Z)