How antidemocratic efforts could sway a presidential election
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” French journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr wrote in 1849. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Consider 1968 and 2024. There are big differences, of course, but in some ways the years are echoing one another, especially in the pivotal role Nebraska may again play in a presidential election.
Nebraska’s public TV station in 2008 produced a documentary about the state’s key role in the election of over a half-century ago. The piece, “‘68: The Year Nebraska Mattered,” ably charted the ways presidential contenders courted support in the state.
The documentarians may have even more reason to revisit the theme about this year.
Recall that in 1968, the country was beset by often-violent polarization. Vietnam was tearing us apart, pitting young people against old, conservatives against liberals. Racism was a huge issue, as the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. provoked rioting across the country.
An openly racist strongman candidate for president thought Nebraska was so important to his campaign that he appeared in Omaha. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, came to the state to court voters for his American Independence Party. His visit triggered rioting in the then-small city and he drew condemnation from the state’s Republican governor, Norbert Tiemann, among many others.
Meanwhile, Democrats also stormed the state for their primary. Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy both came to woo convention delegates, hoping to beat incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the nomination. On the Republican side, Richard Nixon vied with New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to his left and Ronald Reagan on the party’s right. Nixon, who was trying for a comeback after losing the 1960 presidential election, stumped for voters in Omaha, too.
As it turned out, Nixon swept Nebraska for the GOP ticket. While Kennedy won over the Nebraska Democrats, his assassination on June 5 left the party ultimately with Humphrey. And, in the end, Nixon prevailed nationally, overwhelming both Wallace and Humphrey that November.
Now, Nebraska is looming large again – even larger this time — as Donald J. Trump presses legislators in the state to overturn its practice, dating back to legislation in 1991, of splitting its Electoral College votes by Congressional district. Nebraska will have five such electoral votes and Trump fears that he will lose one such vote, that of the 2nd District, comprising Omaha and its suburbs. While the state overall went for Trump in 2020, he lost that Omaha area electoral vote.
The district has gone twice for Republicans and twice for Democrats in the last four presidential elections, as reported by the Nebraska Examiner. To avoid a repeat of his 2020 loss, Trump wants the state legislature to switch over to the winner-take-all system that prevails in other states, a change that would, in effect, disenfranchise many Omaha-area voters, as the rest of Nebraska tends to go GOP.
As polls suggest that there will be a tight vote nationally, just a single vote in the Electoral College could put Harris over the top, giving her the 270 she would need. Thus, Trump’s electoral gamesmanship.
Unsurprisingly, the opportunistic Republican governor of Nebraska, Jim Pillen, backs Trump’s efforts. But, so far, he hasn’t amassed enough support among the state’s legislators to do this. Pillen went so far as to bring a couple dozen Republican legislators to his mansion to hear an in-person pitch for eliminating the electoral rule from Sen. Lindsey Graham, as the Examiner reported. Trump also spoke by phone beforehand with some of the attendees.
The only other state to have a similar split-vote rule is Maine, which has taken that approach since 1969. So far, however, legislators in the Democratically dominated state have balked at making a change, even though that could help Democrats by taking away a likely GOP single electoral vote. Trump carried a single Maine district in both 2016 and 2020, getting one of the state’s four votes.
The states each award a single Electoral College vote to the winner in each of their congressional districts, plus two votes to the statewide winner of the popular vote.
Maine pioneered the split-vote system as part of an effort to push the country toward a system where the popular vote matters more than the Electoral College does, as the Bangor Daily News reported. Recall that five presidents, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016, lost the popular vote but prevailed in the college vote. Trump was swamped in both in 2020, though he continues to deny that.
Trump’s effort to overturn the Nebraska split-vote practice is of a piece with his general antidemocracy approach, of course. His supporters recently enacted a rule in Georgia to require counting ballots by hand, which would likely delay results and, according to critics, could lead to many errors. The change is being challenged in court.
Recall that Trump infamously tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes to put him over the top in the state in 2020. Trump’s phone call to the official was filled with a slew of false claims by the former president, as the Brennan Center documented.
Recall, too, Trump’s efforts to discredit elections all across the country. More than 60 court cases went against him, including many that involved judges appointed by Trump and other Republicans.
If he does win this fall, Trump’s intentions to subvert democracy are troubling, whether they involve electoral manipulation, concentrating more power in the White House or summoning the military to suppress dissent. His plans — some of which are based on Project 2025, despite his disavowal of the document — have been criticized by such nonpartisan groups as the ACLU and Protect Democracy, along with Democratic leaders from President Biden on down.
Trump has long been an admirer of autocrats, even praising one, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, by name in his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. The former president warmed to the idea of being a dictator on day one in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. And his vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, recently shared a stage with autocrat-loving Tucker Carlson, a disgraced former Fox News host turned podcaster. Carlson did a fawning interview with Vladimir Putin and recently gushed over a Holocaust denier on his podcast.
If Trump defeats Harris — with or without overturning the Nebraska system — his bid to upend the longstanding split-vote approach in Nebraska may just be a sign of what more is to come. Much has changed since the state made a difference in 1968, but we again see a racist demagogue with a strongman approach trying to make a mark in Nebraska at a time of great polarization. The biggest difference this time is that he’s got much of the state’s Republican establishment behind him.
The choice of whether to toss out split-voting could be close — maybe even a matter of a single vote in Nebraska’s Republican legislative ranks. Fittingly, that may hinge on local Omaha politics, according to the Examiner. State Sen. Mike McDonnell, a labor leader and Democrat-turned-Republican, aspires to run for mayor of the city.
Would his constituents want to support someone who made their votes irrelevant? When he switched parties, McDonnell said he opposed a shift to winner-take-all. A spokesman said he’s sticking with that stance — for now.
And will antidemocratic efforts prevail nationally? If so, the path to those may begin in the state capitol of Lincoln, Nebraska.