Tom Minear: The audacious plot that could tie the US election

With just weeks until the US election, Republicans are trying to change the rules with an audacious plot that could spark chaos, writes US Correspondent Tom Minear.

The only thing that seems somewhat certain right now about the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is that it’s going to be close.

So close, in fact, that the former president’s allies are plotting a last-minute rule change that could lead to the most extraordinary of outcomes: a dead heat.

This is a bit technical, but bear with me, because it is a stunning reminder of the flaws ingrained in America’s electoral system that are increasingly being exploited.

The president is chosen by the Electoral College, made up of 538 Americans chosen to represent their state, which each have a set number of electors based on population. Just about every state has a winner-take-all rule, handing its electors to the candidate with the most votes, and so a candidate needs 270 electors overall to win.

Only seven states seem to be competitive this year, and if Ms Harris repeats Mr Biden’s 2020 victories in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, she should have exactly 270.

Nebraska, a Republican state, does not have a winner-take-all rule for its five electors. It gives two to the popular vote winner, and one for each of its three congressional districts, one of which covers the Democratic-leaning city of Omaha.

The race between Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is so close that the former president’s allies are plotting a last-minute rule change that could lead to the most extraordinary of outcomes: a dead heat. Picture: Jeff Kowalsky and Mandel Ngan / AFP

Here’s the twist. Republicans want Nebraska to move to the winner-take-all rule so they can claim all five electors. In doing so, they could force a 269-all tie. The next president would then be decided by Congress in a process that favours Mr Trump.

The Nebraska gambit has not happened before because Maine – a Democratic state which also eschews the winner-take-all rule – could match the move and cancel it out. But while it is now too late for Maine’s legislature to act, Nebraska can change its rules up until the day before the election.

That means Ms Harris’s political fate may well rest on a Nebraska state senator who quit the Democrats and joined the Republicans this year, and is now under pressure to be the swing vote to pull off the party’s ploy.

As outrageous as this sounds, it speaks to a far larger problem that will play out in dramatic fashion in November. America’s election rules are written by politicians, and in an election where the stakes are this high, they are willing to do anything to win.

No wonder Americans are distrustful of their politics. And, as I have written before, we must count ourselves lucky to have the independent Australian Electoral Commission.