Nebraska to Call Special Session to Change Its Electoral College Vote Structure

This is big news for the 2024 election. Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) says he will call the legislature into a special session to change the way that the state apportions its electoral college votes.

Nebraska is a very red state, but because of the way it apportions electoral votes, the Democrat running for president always gets at least one of its votes. Republicans are looking to change this so that Nebraska will be a winner-takes-all state in presidential elections going forward.

In 2020, Donald Trump whipped Joe Biden with 60% of the vote in Nebraska. It wasn’t even close. But because of the way it apportions its vote, Trump received four electoral votes and Diaper Joe received one. If the 2024 election ends up being very close, that one vote could end up being the decisive one.

Many are criticizing Nebraska Republicans for this move. How dare they change the rules! That’s absurd. The Democrats are always working aggressively to give themselves every advantage that they can in elections. Republicans should do the same, but they’re always so weak and ineffectual that they usually cave at the suggestion of taking positive action for themselves. What Nebraska is doing is perfectly fair and legal.

A huge amount of credit for this effort goes to Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point Action group, along with (and I hate to say this part) Mark Levin of Fox News. Kirk and Levin hosted a big rally at the Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha on Tuesday. They encouraged Republican voters to get involved with this plan and to keep pressure on Republicans in the legislature to make it happen.

Nebraska’s current system puts the GOP at a disadvantage nationally, which makes no sense when you think about it. The people of all of Nebraska are supposed to decide who wins their state’s electoral votes, not the people of Omaha.

“The Republican always wins a significant majority in Nebraska,” said Levin. He notes that the state’s system was “set up in a way so that the Republicans lose an electoral college vote.”

Republicans in the Nebraska legislature tried to bring this measure up for a vote last week, but it failed due to some silly intraparty fighting in the House. Gov. Pillen says the GOP will now get its ducks in a row, make sure the votes are there, and go into a special session to quickly make it happen.

It’s hilarious to see how Democrats are freaking out about a potential rule change that will impact just one electoral vote. This is the same party that invented unattended ballot drop boxes and wants universal mail-in voting in all 50 states, and which changed so many rules in 2020 using the pandemic as an excuse that it makes your head spin.

Becoming a winner-takes-all state definitely changes the math and opens some potential new paths to the White House for Donald Trump and Republicans in all future elections. For example, if Trump were to flip Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada this year, he would lose the presidential election with 269 votes. Biden would have 270, thanks to that one lonely electoral vote from the liberals in Omaha. If Nebraska becomes winner-takes-all, Trump wins that scenario 270-269.

I don’t think it’s going to be that close. Trump has been polling 6 points ahead of Joe Biden in Maine for the past two months. Biden’s failed policies have hurt families in America so much that a lot of moderate Democrats who don’t suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome won’t be voting for him this November.

It’s one thing to vote for a Democrat if that’s what you’ve always done because you have a pet issue or two that are important to you. But when Joe Biden grinds you down closer and closer to poverty with every policy, you’d have to be truly crazy to vote for him again.

Anyway, we’ll keep you posted on what happens with Nebraska’s special session and its efforts to reform its electoral college vote apportionment. Every vote does count, so hopefully, they’ll make this happen.

Here’s Charlie Kirk talking about the effort with Steve Bannon for some more background: