When Joe Biden won the presidential election in 2020, he managed to secure one electoral vote from the state of Nebraska thanks to a 1991 law that allocates electoral votes by congressional district rather than the “winner take all” method used by most other states.
With the 2024 presidential election expected to be close, right-wing activists, led by right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, have launched a campaign to pressure the Nebraska legislature to change the system explicitly for the benefit of Donald Trump.
On Tuesday night, Kirk’s TPUSA held a rally at far-right pastor and self-proclaimed “prophet” Hank Kunneman’s Lord of Hosts Church in Omaha, where speaker after speaker made clear that the purpose of this campaign is solely to help reelect Trump.
TPUSA Action’s Brett Galaszewski opened the event by declaring that if the Nebraska system is changed, Trump will have “a much easier path to the presidency.”
William Feely, legislative director of the Nebraska Republican Party, then said that Nebraskans want to see the law changed “to support Donald J. Trump as their next president.”
“Do you want four more years of Joe Biden?” asked Eric Underwood, chairman of the Nebraska Republican Party. “If we get winner take all passed, we get to be the first decider for the presidential nomination: that’s the first vote for President Trump … When we pass that one more electoral vote, we’re going to elect Donald J. Trump to be the next president.”
Charlie Kirk closed out the event by portraying an unacceptable scenario “that none of us want to live through in November” in which Trump flips many states he lost in 2020 but still loses the presidency because of Nebraska’s “goofy system.”
“We are currently being controlled by a small minority and their time is coming up,” Kirk proclaimed. “Our vessel to get them out of power, our communicator, our fighter needs our help. Trump needs your help. This movement is looking on Nebraska; the millions of patriots across the country that have now been activated on this topic are praying for you and your leaders. They are praying for this state and I have full confidence that this beautiful, beautiful place with some of the greatest people on God’s green Earth are going to step up boldly and courageously and get this done.”
Interestingly, following the 2012 election, it was GOP legislators and activists who began urging states to adopt Nebraska’s system for allocating electoral votes in presidential elections because doing so would greatly benefit Republican candidates. But because the very system they championed has awarded one electoral vote to Biden from a red state, they now insist that it must be done away with.
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