One of the consequences of close presidential elections in the US is that one learns the minutiae of the complicated rules that govern it. One of those is that the winner of the contest is determined by who gets a majority of the 538 Electoral College votes. The votes are apportioned to the states, with each state given a number that is the sum of the number of its members in the US senate (two for each state) and House of Representatives (determined by its population size). Washington DC is not a state but for the purpose of presidential elections is treated as one with a single district and thus has three votes.

Since the number 538 is even, that leaves open the possibility of a tie result 269-269. In that case, the election is thrown to the House of Representatives, where each state is given one vote, determined by a majority vote of its congressional delegation. Since Republicans have a majority of the seats in a majority of states, this means that a tie vote will result in the Republican nominee becoming president. Hence each electoral vote matters.

It is up to each state to decide how to allocate its electoral votes and almost all of them give all to the candidate who wins the majority of the popular vote in that state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska. In those states, the electoral college votes are assigned by giving two to the winner of the overall vote and the others to the winner of each congressional district. This means that in Maine, which has two congressional districts, it could be split 4-0 or 3-1. In Nebraska, which has three congressional districts and made the change to this system in 1991, it could be split 5-0, 4-1, or 3-2. The last one is less likely since it would mean that one candidate won just one district but by a winning margin large enough to overcome the losing margins in the other two and emerge as the winner overall.

Nebraska is generally a red state but the district centered around the capital city Omaha tends to vote Democratic and thus one would expect a 4-1 split in favor of the Republican candidate.

To understand what happened this week, one should note that Nebraska has just one legislative body with 49 members. They are nominally non-partisan but in reality they self-identify with one party or the other. The party split was 32-17 in favor of the GOP which is just one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to change the rules about how to allocate its electoral votes. But in April of this year, a Democratic member Mike McDonnell crossed over to the GOP, giving them the required supermajority. This allowed them the opportunity to change the rules so that all five votes would go to creepy Donald Trump.

The switch had Trump loyalists in the Nebraska GOP buzzing about going back to a winner-take-all system. Recently, Trump’s allies and even the former president himself have been pressuring Republican officials to try.

But in McDonnell’s 5th Legislative District, almost 45% of the voters are registered Democrats, and their party strongly opposes going back to winner take all. Fewer than 26% of the district’s voters are Republicans.

Under the Nebraska Constitution, new laws don’t take effect until three months after lawmakers adjourn — too late for the proposal to affect the Nov. 5 election.

The state constitution does allow the Legislature to add an emergency clause to have a law take effect immediately, but a bill with an emergency clause must pass with a two-thirds majority.

The Legislature’s rules also require the same two-thirds majority to end a filibuster blocking a measure.

So what happened? The effort failed, due to a strange confluence of events and motivations.

The Republicans really put on the full-court press to try to get the unicameral Nebraska legislature to make the state’s EVs winner-take-all, thus turning four certain EVs for the GOP into five certain EVs. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) headed to the Cornhusker State to do some arm-twisting, and Donald Trump even got involved (admittedly, via Zoom). But, as of yesterday, the effort appears to be dead on the vine (well, dead on the cornstalk).

The central figure here is State Sen. Mike McDonnell. He used to be a Democrat, but now he’s a Republican. Although, given that the Nebraska legislature is nonpartisan, it probably should be that he used to be nonpartisan, but now he’s nonpartisan. In any event, it would require 33 votes to change the rules. That means every one of the 33 “nonpartisan” Republicans in the legislature would have to agree, because every one of the 16 “nonpartisan” Democrats opposes the change. McDonnell came out yesterday and said he would not vote with his fellow “nonpartisan” Republicans. That means 32 votes, at most (and two other “nonpartisan” Republicans are wavering), and 32 isn’t enough.
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We are hardly dialed in to the nuances and subtleties of Nebraska politics, but Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) is, and she said yesterday that “It’s over.” We see no reason not to believe her. Sorry, Lindsey.

The Nebraska governor confirmed today the failure of the effort, saying that he would not be convening a special session of the legislature to attempt to make the change.

Creepy Trump is not happy with how things went down..

As a side note, why did McDonnell switch parties in the first place, making him the 33rd Republican and giving the party the supermajority that would enable them to do pretty much whatever they wanted? He did so in April of this year after the Democratic party censured him in March for supporting abortion restrictions. So why did he not take this opportunity to get revenge on his former Democratic allies for their censuring him by forcing through this measure?

Like most politicians, he gave a high-minded reason.

[H]e explained his official reason like this: “After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”

But as is often the case, there is likely a self-interested reason underlying it, due to term limit rules in the state that bar McDonnell from running again for the state legislature when his current term expires at the end of this year.

What he forgot to mention is that he’s planning to run for mayor of Omaha, which is pretty blue, and is smack-dab in the middle of NE-02. That is the district whose EV would likely end up being transferred from Kamala Harris to Trump. McDonnell’s future political ambitions surely played some role in his decision.

So there you have it. Of course, in politics, things are never over until they are over and there may still be efforts to get the rules changed. But it does look pretty dead.

This a nice example of the old saying that “All politics is local”. Presidential hopeful creepy Trump’s effort to get another electoral vote in Nebraska may have run aground because of a local politician’s ambition to become the mayor of a city.