His comments came after the Republican leader of the Nebraska Legislature, Sen. John Arch, said he was restricting major amendments to bills on the floor, most likely taking away the last best path for Lippincott’s proposal.
“The time for adding bills to bills is over,” Arch told members Friday morning.
The state’s legislative session ends April 18, though members have only four meeting days scheduled after this weekend. While Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) could call a special session to consider the proposal, it remains to be seen if the bill would have the votes to overcome a filibuster.
Nebraska is one of only two states that award electoral votes among statewide and congressional district winners, a system that allowed President Biden to pick off one electoral vote in an Omaha-area swing district in 2020. Lippincott’s bill would return Nebraska, a solidly red state, to a winner-take-all system where the statewide winner is entitled to all its electoral votes.
Lippincott’s legislation had been languishing until Tuesday, when Trump and Pillen came out in support of it. Hours earlier, a prominent Trump ally, Charlie Kirk, asked his large social media following to pressure Pillen and state lawmakers to advance the legislation.
On Wednesday night, one of Lippincott’s GOP colleagues unsuccessfully sought to add his bill as an amendment to unrelated legislation. The amendment was ruled not germane, and a vote to override the ruling failed.
On Thursday, Lippincott was still holding out hope his proposal could be tacked on to another bill, while Pillen sounded less optimistic.
“Conservative Nebraskans have to get in the game and have your voice be heard,” Pillen said at an unrelated news conference. “We can’t fix winner-take-all in 30 hours. It’s been a problem for 30 years. We have to win elections.”
Kirk, the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, was planning to visit Omaha on Tuesday for a rally to urge passage of the proposal. Kirk said Friday on X that Pillen should call a special session, adding that Trump “needs this electoral vote in November.”
Democrats and some Republicans in Nebraska had balked at having the issue foisted upon them in the already busy final days of their session.
“This is about a tweet,” state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, a Democrat who represents Omaha, said before the Wednesday vote. “We are allowing ourselves to be governed by a tweet, and that’s not how we should make policy.”