Nebraska Secretary of State says the legislation needs to change after fraudulent petition signatures

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen released a statement after the recent arrests and warrants regarding fraudulent petition signatures.

Evnen said he agrees with Gov. Pillen and that he will work towards changing the election petition signature process.

“The Lancaster County Sheriff’s office today announced the arrests across the country of five petition circulators who will be charged with felony election fraud in Nebraska. The time has come to address the persistent problems with Nebraska’s election petition signature collection process. I will be working on legislation to bring order to this chaos,” Evnen said. “I agree with the Governor that the per-signature payment of petition circulators should be prohibited. I thank the Lancaster County Election Commission for their hard work on the signature verification process for these petitions. It takes a great deal of investment of both time and money for county officials and their staff to verify petition signatures and ensure thresholds have been met. Circulator fraud is wrong, it is illegal, and it also places an undue burden on these election offices, wasting time and taxpayer money to comb through petition pages containing overwhelming numbers of fraudulent signatures.”

The investigation is still ongoing regarding the petitions and signatures. Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said there are a few warrants already obtained.