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      Nebraska Republicans Renew Push for ‘Winner Take All’ Electoral System

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      A renewed push by Nebraska Republicans to move to a “winner-take-all” system in presidential elections has raised the prospect that the 2024 contest could end in an electoral college tie — with the House of Representatives deciding the winner.Nebraska and Maine are the only states that divide their electoral votes according to the presidential winners of congressional districts. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the eastern district around Omaha and its one vote. On Tuesday, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, a Republican, threw his support behind a G.O.P.-led bill languishing in the state’s unicameral legislature that would end the practice.“It would bring Nebraska in line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” Mr. Pillen wrote in a statement.The resurrection of the state bill was sparked this week by Charlie Kirk, the chief executive of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump conservative advocacy group, who pressed the state legislature to move forward on social media.Former President Donald J. Trump quickly endorsed the governor’s “very smart letter” on his social media site.And for good reason. If Mr. Biden were to hold Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but lose Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and the one Nebraska vote he took in 2020, the electoral college would be deadlocked at 269 votes each. The House would then decide the victor, not by total votes but by the votes of each state delegation. That would almost certainly give the election to Mr. Trump.But that Sun-Belt-sweep-plus-one scenario still might be out of reach. Democrats in the legislature expressed confidence on Tuesday that they could filibuster the measure, and the state legislative session is set to end on April 18.Conversely, Maine, where Democrats hold the governor’s office and a majority in the legislature, could change its system to take back the electoral vote that Mr. Trump won in 2020. Mr. Biden won Maine by nine percentage points, but Mr. Trump took a vote in the electoral college by winning the state’s rural second district. More

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      Biden Critics Push Democrats to Submit Blank Ballots in New York

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      President Biden will face another round of organized protest votes over his wartime support for Israel on Tuesday, when New York and three other states hold presidential primaries.The outcome of the contests is not in doubt for Mr. Biden. But activists infuriated over his handling of the war in Gaza are urging participants to vote “uncommitted” or leave ballots blank to maintain pressure on the president.They have put particular emphasis on New York, a large Democratic state that has been a center for demonstrations against the war, including one during a star-studded Biden campaign fund-raiser last week.Unlike other states, New York does not allow participants in its primary to vote “uncommitted” or write in other options. So organizers have urged voters to register their disapproval of Mr. Biden by leaving their ballots blank instead.The “Leave It Blank” campaign has the support of the local Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party, New York’s influential left-leaning party. But two of the president’s most trenchant Democratic critics around the war, Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have not promoted it.Antiwar activists argue that the “uncommitted” protests, which began in Michigan in February, have had an effect. After offering Israel unflinching support in the aftermath of Hamas’s deadly attack on Oct. 7, Mr. Biden has grown more openly critical of the American ally’s war strategy in recent weeks. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has also accelerated after months of Israeli bombardment.Groups are organizing similar votes in three other states holding primaries on Tuesday. In two of them, Connecticut and Rhode Island, primary participants will have the option of voting “uncommitted” if they want to register a protest against the president. In Wisconsin, a crucial swing state, they can choose a similar label, “uninstructed,” to show concern.In another twist, neither Mr. Biden nor his critics are likely to know the size of the protest vote in New York on election night.A spokeswoman for New York’s Board of Elections said the body did not typically report the number of blank ballots cast in presidential primaries in initial, unofficial results because they have no effect on the allocation of party delegates.Organizers of the “Leave It Blank” campaign have threatened to sue the board to pressure it to share the result more quickly. But on Monday, the spokeswoman, Kathleen McGrath, said the board had no reason to change its practice. She said the tally of blank ballots would be public within two weeks. More

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      ‘Fix the Damn Roads’: How Democrats in Purple and Red States Win

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      When Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania got an emergency call about I-95 last June, his first thought turned to semantics. “When you say ‘collapse,’ do you really mean collapse?” he recalled wondering. Highways don’t typically do that, but then tractor-trailers don’t typically flip over and catch fire, which had happened on an elevated section of the road in Philadelphia.Shapiro’s second, third and fourth thoughts were that he and other government officials needed to do the fastest repair imaginable.“My job was: Every time someone said, ‘Give me a few days, and I’ll get back to you,’ to say, ‘OK, you’ve got 30 minutes,’” he told me recently. He knew how disruptive and costly the road’s closure would be and how frustrated Pennsylvanians would get.But he knew something else, too: that if you’re trying to impress a broad range of voters, including those who aren’t predisposed to like you, you’re best served not by joining the culture wars or indulging in political gamesmanship but by addressing tangible, measurable problems.In less than two weeks, the road reopened.Today, Shapiro enjoys approval ratings markedly higher than other Pennsylvania Democrats’ and President Biden’s. He belongs to an intriguing breed of enterprising Democratic governors who’ve had success where it’s by no means guaranteed, assembled a diverse coalition of supporters and are models of a winning approach for Democrats everywhere. Just look at the fact that when Shapiro was elected in 2022, it was with a much higher percentage of votes than Biden received from Pennsylvanians two years earlier. Shapiro won with support among rural voters that significantly exceeded other Democrats’ and with the backing of 14 percent of Donald Trump’s voters, according to a CNN exit poll that November.Biden’s fate this November, Democratic control of Congress and the party’s future beyond 2024 could turn, in part, on heeding Shapiro’s and like-minded Democratic leaders’ lessons about reclaiming the sorts of voters the party has lost.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Quiet Way Democrats Hope to Expand Their Power at the State Level

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      The Democratic Governors Association is beginning a multimillion-dollar effort aimed at appointing more state judges.Locked out of power on the Supreme Court and still playing catch-up against Republicans in the federal judiciary, Democrats are hoping to gain a political advantage on a less visible but still important playing field: the state courts.After flipping the Arizona governor’s seat from Republican to Democratic last year, Gov. Katie Hobbs has appointed 15 judges to the state’s Superior Courts. In five years leading deeply red Kansas, the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, has named two justices to the Court of Appeals and one to the State Supreme Court.Governors have the power to appoint judges in nearly every state. These responsibilities are set to take center stage in political campaigns this year, as the Democratic Governors Association begins a multimillion-dollar effort, called the Power to Appoint Fund, aimed at key governor’s races.The fund, with a $5 million goal, will focus especially hard on two open seats in 2024 battlegrounds: New Hampshire, where the governor has the power to appoint state court justices, and North Carolina, which elects its justices; the next governor will appoint at least one State Supreme Court justice because of the state’s age limit rules.“Before we had our own abortion amendment issue here in the state of Kansas, I honestly didn’t hear much about court appointments except from attorney groups,” Governor Kelly said in an interview. “But since the Dobbs decision and then our own decision here in the state of Kansas, it’s become more of a forefront issue with folks. People, I think, recognize now more than ever the impact that the courts can have on their daily lives.”Pointing to the rightward tilt of the Supreme Court and important statewide court battles, Meghan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, said that voters needed to be reminded of the power “Democratic governors have to appoint judges who are going to uphold the rule of law.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Utah Sets Restrictions on Transgender People’s Bathroom Use

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      The NewsUtah will prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms in public schools and government-owned buildings that align with their gender identity, after Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill on Tuesday imposing the restrictions.Demonstrators protest the bill on the steps of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Marielle Scott/The Deseret News, via Associated PressBackgroundThe bill, House Bill 257, which passed the Legislature last week, set sweeping restrictions for transgender people.Under the bill, also known as Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying and Women’s Opportunities, transgender people can use bathrooms that match their gender identity only if they can prove that they have had gender-affirming surgery and have had the sex on their birth certificates changed.In public schools, students can now use only a bathroom, shower room or locker room that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, with few exceptions. For government-owned buildings, including state universities, the restrictions apply only to showers and locker rooms.Violators may face charges for loitering, and government-owned institutions may face fines if they do not enforce the new rules. The state auditor will be required to establish a process to receive and investigate reports of violations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Illinois Hearing Officer, a Former Republican Judge, Says Trump Engaged in Insurrection

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      But the hearing officer said the State Board of Elections should let the courts decide whether Mr. Trump’s conduct disqualified him from the ballot.A former Republican judge appointed to hear arguments on whether to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from the Illinois primary ballot said on Sunday that he believed Mr. Trump engaged in insurrection by attempting to remain in office after the 2020 election.But the former judge, Clark Erickson, whose nonbinding opinion will be considered by the State Board of Elections on Tuesday, added that he believed the board did not have the authority to disqualify Mr. Trump on those grounds and that the question should instead be left to the courts.The mixed decision was at least a symbolic setback for the former president, who has faced official challenges to his candidacy in 35 states and has been found ineligible for the primaries in Colorado and Maine. Mr. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, is still likely to appear on the primary ballots in both of those states as the U.S. Supreme Court considers an appeal of the Colorado ruling.In Illinois, at least five of the eight members of the Board of Elections would have to vote on Tuesday to remove Mr. Trump for him to be struck from the ballot. The appointed board is made up of four Democrats and four Republicans. Their decision can be appealed to the courts before the March 19 primary.The Illinois challenge, like those in other states, is based on a clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that disqualifies government officials who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding office.At a hearing on Friday in downtown Chicago, lawyers for residents objecting to Mr. Trump’s candidacy accused the former president of insurrection and played footage from the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Lawyers for Mr. Trump denied the allegation and argued that, in any case, the constitutional clause in question did not apply to the presidency. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Last Exit Before Trump: New Hampshire

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      Tuesday’s primary election will probably decide whether there will be a race at all.Newport, N.H., last week. CJ Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockLet’s be blunt about the stakes of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.If Donald J. Trump wins decisively, as the polls suggest, he will be on track to win the Republican nomination without a serious contest. The race will be all but over.The backdrop is simple: Mr. Trump holds a dominant, 50-plus-point lead in the polls with just seven weeks to go until the heart of the primary season, when the preponderance of delegates will be awarded. His position has only improved since Iowa, with national polls now routinely showing him with over 70 percent of the vote.Even skeptical Republican officials are consolidating behind the party’s front-runner. Ron DeSantis’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Mr. Trump is only the latest example.The polling by state isn’t much better for Nikki Haley, the only remaining opponent for Mr. Trump. He leads Ms. Haley by at least 30 points in all of the states after New Hampshire until Super Tuesday. So without a monumental shift in the race, he will secure the nomination in short order. More

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      Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

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      The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More