Nebraska Republicans fell short Tuesday in achieving their long-held goal of returning the state to a winner-take-all system in the Electoral College A bill that would have undone its current proportional system — which allowed President Obama to peel away a single electoral vote from the state in 2008 — failed by a single vote to overcome a filibuster in its final procedural step, the New York Times reported.
Nebraska is one of two states (the other being Maine) that awards some of its electoral votes according to the popular vote in each of its congressional districts, a system Nebraska has had since 1991. Supporters of the system says that making the state somewhat competitive for Democratic presidential candidates energizes voters and attracts attention to the state from campaigns. Only in 2008 did the electoral vote split however.
Those who pushed for the failed bill that would have returned it to winner-take-all argued that Nebraska should have a system like the vast majority of other states. Republicans in Nebraska have always been wary of its proportional system, but ramped up their efforts to repeal it after Obama successfully capitalized on it and won the electoral vote coming out of the Second Congressional District around Omaha in 2008.
The filibuster was led by state Sen. Ernie Chambers, an independent and the legislature’s longest serving member who also made national headlines for his effort to ban the death penalty in the state. Chambers represents a district in Omaha, which became known as the “blue dot” in the reliably red state.
“It means that now when people start organizing at the neighborhood level, it matters because we can get one of those votes,” Chambers said, according to the New York Times.
