{"id":33915,"date":"2023-03-17T14:11:59","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T20:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33915"},"modified":"2023-03-17T14:11:59","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T20:11:59","slug":"bill-would-reinstate-winner-take-all-electoral-system-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33915","title":{"rendered":"Bill would reinstate winner-take-all electoral system"},"content":{"rendered":"

All five of Nebraska\u2019s Electoral College votes would be assigned to the statewide winner in presidential elections under a bill considered March 15 by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Loren Lippincott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB764, sponsored by Central City Sen. Loren Lippincott, would end Nebraska\u2019s split system of awarding electoral votes, in place since 1991. Currently, the statewide winner receives two electoral votes and the winner of each of the state\u2019s three congressional districts receives one electoral vote. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states to use this system.<\/p>\n

Lippincott said measures have been introduced to return to winner-take-all since the year after Nebraska moved to the new system \u2014 also called the district plan. Two of those proposals passed the Legislature but were vetoed by then-Gov. Ben Nelson, he said.<\/p>\n

The current system gives rural voters less of a voice in presidential politics, Lippincott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe district plan, what we have now, discourages candidates from discussing issues that appeal to the state as a whole by rewarding candidates who visit our congressional districts with higher populations and income levels to the exclusion of rural Nebraska,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen testified in support of the proposal, saying a return to the winner-take-all system would allow Nebraska voters to speak with one voice. The statewide winner of the 2020 presidential contest garnered 182,000 more votes than the loser, he said, but only earned four of the state\u2019s five Electoral College votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not playing by the same rules as the other states in the union and we ought to,\u201d Evnen said, \u201cbecause our failure to do so dilutes Nebraska\u2019s Electoral College presence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steve Davies also testified in favor of LB764, saying it would \u201clevel the playing field\u201d for Nebraska. The possibility of splitting the state\u2019s electoral votes makes Nebraska less valuable to presidential candidates, he said.<\/p>\n

Sheri St. Clair testified in opposition to the proposal. The district plan was adopted in an attempt to attract candidates to a solidly conservative state that otherwise would be ignored in presidential elections, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn reality, in all likelihood a presidential race is not going to be so close that a single electoral vote is going to decide the outcome, but it\u2019s important for campaigns to compete everywhere that\u2019s competitive,\u201d St. Clair said. \u201cThe split vote system does keep Nebraska from being a completely \u2018fly-over\u2019 state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gavin Geis of Common Cause Nebraska agreed. Testifying in opposition to LB764, he said a return to winner-take-all would give Nebraska less influence in presidential elections. No other Great Plains state is regularly visited by candidates, he said, because they have nothing to gain electorally in winner-take-all races.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe possibility of a split Electoral College vote brings them here,\u201d Geis said. \u201cIt makes them sell themselves to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on the proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All five of Nebraska\u2019s Electoral College votes would be assigned to the statewide winner in presidential elections under a bill considered March 15 by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[286],"class_list":["post-33915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-loren-lippincott"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33915"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33917,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33915\/revisions\/33917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}