OPINION:
The importance of X as a free speech platform can’t be overstated. In just a matter of days, a suggestion from Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk set off a chain of events that might affect the outcome of the 2024 election — in a good way.
Mr. Kirk’s idea is simple: Get Nebraska to drop its goofy system of splitting the award of electoral votes in presidential elections based on congressional districts. Aside from Maine, every other state is winner take all. This means if the majority of a state’s voters want to see former President Donald Trump return to the Oval Office, he would receive all of that state’s votes.
The proportional system was cooked up in the 1990s to give Omaha’s liberal voters the chance of sending an electoral vote to their preferred candidate, no matter how the rest of the deep-red state votes. Nebraska as a whole hasn’t preferred the Democratic candidate since 1964.
A bill to restore the traditional system of awarding electoral votes, LB 764, is ready to go, but the clock is running out on the legislative session. Bureaucratic inertia may doom Mr. Kirk’s idea, but the state GOP can finesse these deadlines since it wields a 33-16 supermajority.
Republican Gov. Jim Pillen was among the first to lend his support. “It would bring Nebraska into line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” he wrote on Tuesday.
Needless to say, Mr. Trump is also a fan. While a single electoral vote is unlikely to play a material role in the ultimate outcome, there is a circumstance in which it could provide a decisive edge. As Mr. Kirk notes, polls show support for President Biden is slipping in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. Should the president lose those states in November and keep the rest of what he won in 2020, Omaha’s lone electoral vote would be the deciding factor in keeping Mr. Biden in the White House.
On the other hand, unifying Nebraska’s vote under the same scenario would create a 269-269 electoral tie, leaving the choice of president to the House of Representatives. That’s a messy result to be sure, but one preferable to another four years of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris flooding the country with illegal immigrants, jailing political opponents and censoring free speech.
The Cornhusker State isn’t alone in coming up with creative fixes in anticipation of the November contest. Wisconsin voters on Tuesday protected the state’s 10 electoral votes from the influence of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who invested $400 million in a shameless effort to elect Mr. Biden in 2020 through nonprofit groups dispatched to “assist” local election officials.
The freshly adopted state constitutional amendment prohibits private interests from funding or administering local elections. By taking the matter directly to the public, GOP lawmakers evaded the veto pen of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
The clever thinking in Wisconsin and Nebraska is just what’s needed to accomplish the change in national direction that a majority of voters say they want.
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