Maine Democrats have likely run out of time to change Electoral College laws if Nebraska GOP acts
LINCOLNVILLE, Maine — As Republicans in Nebraska consider changing state law to give Donald Trump an extra Electoral College vote this fall, their Democratic counterparts in Maine have little recourse to even the score.
The only two states that award Electoral College votes by congressional district, Republican-leaning Nebraska and Democratic-leaning Maine, play unusual roles in presidential politics because their systems allow each party a chance to pick off one electoral vote in a state where they would get nothing under the typical winner-take-all system.
Nebraska Republicans have tried and failed to change the state's rules for years, sometimes citing how the system gives Nebraska more relevance on the national political stage, as well as concerns that Maine Democrats would cancel their work out by shifting to winner-take-all, too. And they’ve fallen short despite a recent push from Trump and other national Republicans this spring.
In 2020, Trump won one electoral vote from Maine’s rural 2nd Congressional District and is heavily favored to do so again, while Joe Biden won one from Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District.
But Republicans' latest push for a winner-take-all system in Nebraska, with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., lobbying state lawmakers on Trump’s behalf, comes after a key deadline in Maine that will make it nearly impossible for the blue state to counter any move by the red one.
It takes 90 days for legislation to go into effect in Maine after it is enacted, and Thursday marked 89 days until the Electoral College is scheduled to meet on Dec. 17, meaning it’s already too late for the Maine Legislature to change to a winner-take-all system under normal rules.
State law does allow for "emergency" legislation that goes into effect immediately, but activating that provision requires a supermajority of two-thirds support in both legislative chambers.
Democrats control both chambers of the Maine Legislature, but they have nowhere near a supermajority in the House. Even if every Democrat in the state House wanted to counter Nebraska — far from certain — they would need more than a dozen Republicans to join them to reach the two-thirds threshold.
Democrats have a larger majority in the 35-seat Maine Senate but would still need at least a handful of Republicans to join them along with all 22 Democratic members.
And Maine GOP leaders have already signaled they have no interest in helping Democrats do away with their unusual formula for awarding electoral votes.
“Maine has the gold standard of presidential election processes in the United States,” state House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham told the Bangor Daily News on Thursday. “We should be trying to convince other states to use a more representative process like ours, not change to winner-take-all like other states.”
It’s unclear whether Trump allies in the Nebraska Legislature would ultimately have the votes they need to change the law, especially since they abandoned a similar plan just a few months ago when GOP leaders realized they lacked the support. But backers of the move say they think they can turn some holdouts, especially if Trump applies some pressure.
If Nebraska can change its rule and Maine cannot change its, Trump could net an extra electoral vote — opening up a specific close-election scenario that would lead to an Electoral College tie, launching an arcane process for deciding the presidency in the House of Representatives, where Republicans would have the upper hand.
The scenario is plausible: If Vice President Kamala Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — her strongest battleground states, according to current polls — while losing the other swing states, she would win 269 electoral votes. That’s one short of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
Right now, the most likely place for Harris to find that one extra vote she would need is Omaha’s congressional district, a closely divided district that Biden won four years ago by nearly 7 points.
But if Nebraska Republicans switched to winner take all, then under the same scenario of Harris’ winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and no other battleground states, the Electoral College would deadlock at 269-269, with no winner declared.
The Constitution dictates that a tie in the Electoral College be decided by Congress after a new one is sworn in after the November election. The Senate would choose the vice president, and the presidency would go to a vote in the House — but not under normal rules.
In the House, instead of each member’s getting one vote, each state delegation would get one vote, with the presidency going to whoever won a majority of state delegations (at least 26). Regardless of who controls the House next year, Trump would be a heavy favorite. Republicans control the majority of state delegations and are favored to maintain that edge, even though control of the House majority itself is up for grabs.
Meanwhile, Republicans are favored to win the Senate this year, giving an edge to Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, if the upper chamber were to decide the vice presidency.
None of that may come to pass. And Nebraska conservatives have repeatedly sought to change their state to winner-take-all in the past but come up short, most recently this spring, when they made a serious attempt but lacked enough support to overcome a legislative filibuster.
But unlike the previous times, there no longer appears to be a good way for Maine — and therefore national Democrats — to counter a change in Nebraska.
“Whether or not we can retaliate, this is exactly why we voted to have Maine join the National Popular Vote Compact,” Democratic state Rep. Dan Ankeles said Thursday on X. “Because this drama is a ridiculous & unfair way of picking a President.”
Alex Seitz-Wald reported from Lincolnville and Ben Kamisar from Washington, D.C.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com