I wanted to update you on the situation in Nebraska that we discussed at the end of last week. In short, Republicans were making another run at changing Nebraska’s electoral vote allocation system to winner-take-all, a change which under an unlikely but not far-fetched scenario could hand Trump the presidency. That second bite at the apple looked particularly ominous since it appears that Maine may have lost its opportunity to make the same change and thus neutralize the effort in Nebraska. As we noted on Friday, trying doesn’t mean succeeding. And observers in Nebraska seemed at least skeptical that things had really changed since Republicans tried to do so at Donald Trump’s instigation. There were some articles out of the Nebraska press over the weekend that suggested there was still little chance Republicans could get the votes to make this change. But today we have a report out of Nebraska that the guy who seemed to be the pivotal vote seems to have given a categorical no. State Sen. Mike McDonnell (R) said: “Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support. I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”
There’s some important backstory here. McDonnell is a former Democrat who switched parties after getting censured by state Democrats over his stance on abortion. But he apparently wants to run for Mayor of Omaha, which is in the blue part of the state where Democrats hope to win that single electoral vote. The idea being that helping to make this switch would be deeply damaging to his mayoral hopes.
Obviously, things change. And, given how the current GOP works, I think we can only imagine the mix of private Caribbean islands and torture chambers that will be on offer for doing the right or wrong thing if and when it starts to seem like that one electoral vote will determine the outcome of the race. But for now I think we can move this scenario into the unlikely category, if still possible.
