Washington. Due to a peculiarity, the state of Nebraska could decide the election for Kamala Harris. Donald Trump wants to change the election law.
That Democrats and Republicans will vote on November 5th ultra-tight outcome The polls have been showing the results of the US election for weeks. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris currently have an unobstructed path to 270 votes – a majority in the 538-member electoral college. This will actually determine the 47th US president based on the referendum in December. And every single vote counts…
What this means in the political microcosm is shown by the bitter fight about an unspectacular state in the Midwest: Nebraska. The home of stock market dinosaur Warren Buffett could be the deciding factor in November if Trump and Harris settle into a quasi-stalemate of 269:268 votes.
The deciding factor: The Omaha II electoral district
There is a special feature behind this, which differs from the 50 states, where the principle of “winner takes all” is used. In Nebraska, which is traditionally deeply red and therefore Republican, the five electoral votes for the „electoral college” partly distributed according to voting districts. In the past, for example in the case of Barack Obama (2008) and Joe Biden (2020), this led to four “electors” going to the conservatives – and one to the Democrats. They have good prospects in the Omaha II voting district.
One district can win the November election the difference make.
To do this, one must go along with a well-founded speculation. If Kamala Harris wins three of the seven Battleground-States (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania), she will have 269 votes. The single vote from Omaha would make her president. Even if Trump wins the other four contested swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, he would not have more than 268 votes.
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Trump wants last-minute change
Such a Blink-of-an-Eye Finale has never happened before. But Trump doesn’t want to take any chances. So he has sent out his emissaries to persuade the federal decision-makers in the capital city of Lincoln to make a last-minute change to the law: all five votes should go to whoever wins the entire state this November. Which would most likely be Trump.
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To emphasize the issue, Trump’s all-purpose sycophant Senator Lindsey Graham recently met with Nebraska’s Republican Governor Jim Pillen and local dignitaries of the „Grand Old Party”. “I want the law changed,” Graham said, “I have no scruples about it.”
Much depends on a defector
To achieve this, however, a supermajority of 33 votes is needed in the Senate in Lincoln, otherwise the project will fail. At this point, Mike McDonnell comes into play. The state senator was a Democrat until spring, then defected to the Republicans because of a dispute over the abortion issue and has been courted like a royal for days, asking him to give up his resistance to the introduction of the “winner takes all” principle.
But McDonnell does not want to (yet). On the surface, because it does not make a serious impression to remove a central cornerstone just a few weeks before an election. This would mean that a large part of the more than 485,000 residents of the constituency Omaha IIthe majority of whom lean towards the Democrats, would be deprived of their influence.
Capital Inside by Jörg Quoos, Editor-in-Chief of the FUNKE Central Editorial Office
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Behind the curtain, there are other motives. Former firefighter McDonnell wants to succeed the current mayor of Omaha, Democrat Leirion Gaylor Baird, next year. Will he get a “yes” to the Trump-Deal “buy it”? Time is of the essence. The parliamentary course must be set in the coming weeks at the latest, local newspapers write.
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