State leaders talk about the future of ballot petitions

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – During a meeting at the State Capital on Thursday, state leaders agreed that Nebraska’s current system of identifying fraudulent signatures is working.

As seen recently, several people from out of state were arrested for charges related to signature fraud in Lancaster County.

“We caught it. Our county election officials did their job and caught it. Only valid signatures have been accepted in our election petitions and not every state does what we do,” said Secretary of State Bob Evnen.

“Many states check only a small sample of signatures, here in our state, our election officials check every single signature,” he said.

Circulators get paid per each signature they collect, but Governor Jim Pillen says it should be changed to a pay-per-hour model.

This year more than 767,000 signatures were submitted in support of 17 different petitions but only 542,000 of them were accepted.

Hall County Election Commissioner Tracy Overstreet says despite success in identifying election fraud, there is a cost.

“The cost to taxpayers, is to pay for that signature verification, [and] time cost to county election offices,” she said.

“We have to shift the culture of petition drives,” said Governor Pillen.

“Improving aggressive quotas would significantly reduce the flood of emblement and fraudulent signature collection efforts, primarily initiatives by folks hiring from outside of the great state of Nebraska,” he said.

Ultimately, in order for changes to be made to how circulators are paid, lawmakers will have to take that up in the next legislative session in January.