Winner-take-all debate continues; HHS budget growth questioned

March 16, 2015, 6:36 a.m. ·

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(Photo by Fred Knapp, NET News)

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Lawmakers continued to argue Monday over how Nebraska should cast its electoral votes in presidential elections, and questions were raised about whether the state can afford projected spending increases in Health and Human Services.


In the long debate over Nebraska’s system of casting electoral votes, most senators based on their voting support changing back to the winner-take-all system. But based on who’s speaking, you could get the opposite impression. That pattern held Monday, as Sen. Beau McCoy led off making the case for the change. “In light of the fact that we are a small, agriculturally-based state, we should protect and uplift the entire state by holding our five electoral votes together in the winner-take all system that we used in Nebraska prior to 1991,” he said, adding that the current system has not increased voter turnout, as supporters predicted.

The Nebraska Republican Party favors McCoy’s bill, which would cast all five of Nebraska’s electoral votes in favor of whichever candidate won the statewide vote. That’s the system used in every other state except Maine, which like Nebraska, casts two votes for the statewide winner but the remainder according to who wins each congressional district. That gave Democrat Barack Obama one electoral vote from the Omaha-area district in 2008.

In the officially nonpartisan Legislature, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats 35-13. The bill by McCoy, a Republican, advanced 31-17 on the first round of debate. But as is often the case when a minority is filibustering against a bill, just about everyone who followed McCoy speaking Monday opposed the measure.

Sen. Ernie Chambers, an independent, promoted an idea from Sen. Laura Ebke, a Republican, to encourage the other 48 states to follow the lead of Nebraska and Maine. Chambers said that would enable those “who still labor in the valley of ignorance” to emerge into “the marvelous light of...political enlightenment.”

Ebke herself said, based on emails she’s receiving, it doesn’t seem like people want the system changed. “Most people in the state really don’t care about this issue,” she said, adding that they want to know why legislators aren’t focusing on taxes, spending, and other issues. “Most of the people who have responded to me said ‘Yeah, the way that we’re doing it is just fine, let’s just leave it, and move on.’ So I am ever more convinced, based on the emails that I’ve received, that there really is no reason for us to go back to winner-take-all,” Ebke said.

Sen. Ken Haar, a registered Democrat, said in the earliest days of the republic, most states had district electoral vote systems like Nebraska’s and Maines. But he said as parties gained power with the election between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800, each party realized it could maximize its power in states where it had more voters by using winner-take-all.

Harr said Nebraska’s system is closer to what today’s voters really want. “The vast majority of people in this country favor one person, one vote, and that the president should be elected by a national popular vote. It’s the parties that think they can still gain advantage by having winner-take-all,” he said.

Senators have a little less than two hours of debate time to go before they reach the unofficial four-hour minimum before a cloture vote to cut off debate and vote on the bill itself. They’re expected to reach that late Tuesday morning.

Monday afternoon, the Appropriations Committee held a public hearing on the proposed budget for the Department of Health and Human Services. Sen. John Stinner of Gering said the department’s increases over the last two years, combined with this year’s request, averaged more than 6 percent, while state revenues grow on average less than 5 percent. He asked Joseph Acierno, acting CEO of the Department, if that is sustainable. “We gotta get a grip on that, don’t we?” Stinner said.

Acierno agreed. “I do think that is the goal,” he said. “Our goal is not to have costs just outstripping revenue coming into the state.”

“We’re doing our very best. We have a number of programs, some require more attention than others at times,” Acierno continued. “I would agree with your basic premise, though – we can’t just outstrip whatever revenue is coming to the state… I’m not sure that anyone wants us to be doing that, whether it’s you, whether it’s the governor, or anyone else.”