Conservative hardliner headlines Omaha rally pushing ‘winner take all’

LINCOLN, Neb. (WOWT) - While the Legislature let the push for making Nebraska a “winner-take-all” state quietly fall away last week, Conservatives from across the country have come to Omaha to get loud about the issue.

Extreme-right internet personality Charlie Kirk, founder of student organization Turning Point USA, is speaking at a rally being held Tuesday evening at a southwest Omaha church pushing for the fight for “winner take all” to continue.

“We are rallying to encourage the governor to call for a special session to get Winner Take All passed through the legislature here in Nebraska prior to the 2024 election,” a spokesperson for the event said in an email notification about the event.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “Kirk also promotes Christian nationalism,” and his organization “continues to attract racists to the group.”

“Numerous TPUSA representatives have made bigoted remarks about minority groups and the LGBTQ+ community. White nationalists have attended TPUSA events, even though the group says it rejects white supremacist ideology,” ADL says on its online report of TPUSA.

In response, the Nebraska Democratic Party planned to have a billboard truck circling the church ahead of the event, stopping around 8 p.m.

“Trump extremists did their best to interfere with our fair electoral votes process and they failed. They failed to understand Nebraskans want fairness. They failed to understand the mechanics of our Unicameral. And they failed to understand yet again the grit of Democrats. We remain focused on talking with voters in the Second Congressional District and across our great state about protecting our freedoms from extremists on energy, reproductive rights, human rights, education, and the fundamentals of our democracy,” the NDP said in a written statement following last week’s failed vote.

In 2020, one of Nebraska’s electoral votes went to Joe Biden, later known as the “blue dot” as it represented a single Democratic Electoral College vote in a sea of Republican red. It was only the second time in the history of presidential elections in Nebraska that the state split its electoral votes: It had also happened in 2008, with one vote going to Barack Obama.

State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, who sponsored the initial “winner take all” bill, said after last week’s failed attempted that “my staff and I are doing everything we can to seek options for getting this to the finish line.”

The attempt was made by State Sen. Julie Slama of Sterling, who attached “winner take all” as an amendment to LB1300 in an attempt to give a chance to make it through one of the last days of a very tight legislative session.

The effort failed, with only eight of the necessary 23 votes to move the issue forward; and Speaker John Arch’s announcement later in the week that he wouldn’t let any more bills get attached to other bills seemed to be the final nail in the coffin on this issue — for the rest of the session at least.

The governor posted on X/Twitter on Tuesday night that he would be willing to work toward calling a special session for the “winner-take-all” issue.

Meanwhile, Civic Nebraska, an organization headed by former State Sen. Adam Morfeld, indicated last week that it was prepared to work on getting the matter before voters this year if necessary.

Nebraska has five electoral votes, following the “district plan” put in place in 1992 — the same plan set up in Maine in 1972.

Every other state — except for Maine — is a “winner-take-all” state, meaning whoever wins the popular vote gets all of that state’s electoral votes. Some see that as reason enough to change.

It’s a change Gov. Jim Pillen and other Republicans in the state — and even former President Trump — are pushing for. But research shows that the majority of Americans would prefer the popular vote, not the Electoral College, be used to decide who wins the presidential election.

While ditching the Electoral College altogether could reduce the say that rural areas have in selecting our nation’s president, the system Nebraska and Maine currently follow is known as a “composite” plan, because it also includes an aspect of the “winner-take-all” option: It awards two electoral votes designated for each state’s two U.S. Senate seats; but splits the remaining votes, allowing each U.S. Representative’s District popular vote to claim one electoral vote according to the popular vote result in that district. The District of Columbia also has its own electors — three, in fact.

Nebraska Democrats wants to keep it that way, arguing that the system already in place is fair.

Preston Love, who is running against Sen. Pete Ricketts, issued a statement on the topic Wednesday morning:

“Bringing winner-take-all back to Nebraska’s Presidential electoral process would disenfranchise voters. The very essence of democracy demands fair representation and accountability, yet one-party rule has perpetuated a climate where the voices of many are stifled and ignored. This is another attempt to threaten the democratic process in Nebraska in a Presidential election year that is already underway.”

Lars Mapstead, who is running for president as a Libertarian, has said the change to a “winner take all” system would work against third-party candidates, solidifying the political advantage of mainstream candidates.

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