Top Nebraska Republican: Trump-Led Push To Change Electoral College Vote Is Dead
Deb Fischer says the effort to make the state a winner-take-all election is “over.”
NEBRASKA’S SENIOR SENATOR said on Monday that efforts led by Donald Trump to change the state’s Electoral College vote allocation system to benefit his presidential campaign were dead.
Sen. Deb Fischer told The Bulwark and one other reporter that the votes were not there in the statehouse to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state this cycle.
“It’s over,” said Fischer.
Trump and his team had been putting aggressive pressure on GOP lawmakers to make an eleventh-hour change to scrap the current system, which rewards Electoral College votes on the basis of both the statewide performance of the candidates and their performance in individual districts. Had the push to change the rules succeeded, Kamala Harris would have lost the opportunity to win the occasionally blue-leaning Omaha district. Losing that district’s single vote would in turn have meant that Harris would have likely needed to win an additional state on top of the so-called blue wall trio (Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin) in order to secure more than 269 Electoral College votes. With Omaha in play, those three would be enough on their own to get her to 270.
The efforts to get the legislature to move on the rule change involved dispatching Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to meet with Republican state lawmakers and having Trump allies work on convincing some of the holdouts. But on Monday, one of the key lawmakers, State Sen. Mike McDonnell, announced that he would not back the change, noting that there were just 43 days left until the election.
“Our governor had considered calling a special session of the legislature in order to make that change, but the votes aren’t there to do it,” said Fischer, who had signed a letter pushing the state’s governor to make the Electoral College change.
McDonnell’s announcement left Trump allies fuming. Tyler Bowyer, an official with the influential group Turning Point Action, called for Republicans to remove the senator from office.
“It’s one thing to disagree, it’s another to not work with or meet with Republicans. He’s a dishonest broker and I wouldn’t trust him on ANY vote,” said Bowyer.
Shortly thereafter, Trump weighed in himself. In a post on his social media site, he called McDonnell a “Grandstander” who had “decided, for no reason whatsoever, to get in the way of a great Republicans, common sense, victory.”
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