Governor, Secretary of State and Election Officials Host News Conference on Ballot Petition Process

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Governor, Secretary of State and Election Officials Host News Conference on Ballot Petition Process

LINCOLN, NE – Today, Governor Jim Pillen, Secretary of State Bob Evnen, and county election officials stood side-by-side to address recent investigations into ballot petition efforts. In addition to discussing how fraudulent signatures were uncovered, they also discussed potential measures for ensuring that signature gathering is made more secure going forward.

“I want to thank everyone for all the incredible work done by our local county election commissioners across Nebraska. It’s a heavy lift and a lot of responsibility to make sure that all of that is reviewed and all the numbers run,” said Gov. Pillen. “At the end of the day, election integrity is about protecting the voice of every legal Nebraska voter and making sure every Nebraskan knows that when they get out and vote, their voice is heard and they have 100% confidence in it.”

Nebraska currently utilizes a multi-layer process designed to detect and eliminate fraudulent signatures long before any ballot initiative reaches certification. Local election staff perform rigorous line-by-line references, matching petition signatures directly against the state’s centralized voter registration database to verify active voter status, residential addresses, and dates of birth. Through this systematic verification process, election officials are consistently able to flag irregularities.

“We owe a great debt of gratitude to our county election officials,” said Sec. Evnen. “They are the ones who performed the signature verification process, and they are the ones who detected the fraudulent signatures among the submitted petitions. Their work ensured that only valid signatures were accepted and only petitions which had sufficient valid signatures were certified.”

Over 767,000 signatures, across 17 submitted petitions, were reviewed by county and state election officials this year.

Upon receiving petitions, the Secretary of State’s office assigns each page a unique identification number. Over 85,000 petition pages were paginated this year, before routing them to local counties. By law, county officials have only 40 calendar days to complete signature verification, continuing until they reach 110% of the required threshold for each petition. Whenever fraud is suspected, county election officials notify the Secretary of State’s office and are encouraged to contact law enforcement.

The news conference highlighted the significant administrative strain that high volumes of questionable entries place on local election offices during tight statutory review windows.

“Douglas County processed nearly 349,000 total petition signature lines and found suspected fraud in the same petitions as other counties, using the same prescribed steps and verification processes,” noted Douglas County Election Commissioner Danielle Jensen. “Because of the high volume of pages with suspected fraud, three weeks of employee overtime was required to complete the petitions on schedule, which resulted in a waste of taxpayer dollars.”

Despite these operational pressures, election leadership reaffirmed that the verification safeguards worked exactly as intended by identifying the fraudulent signatures before they could ever reach the ballot.

“The bottom line here is that the Nebraska system works,” said Hall County Election Commissioner Tracy Overstreet. “It was and is successful in identifying fraudulent signatures, which then are not counted toward the thresholds needed to put measures on the ballot.”

While Nebraska’s backend verification successfully caught the largest attempted electoral fraud in state history, Gov. Pillen emphasized that catching bad actors at the finish line is not enough. To protect taxpayers and prevent election staff from being overwhelmed, proactive reforms must be implemented to stop fraud on the front end before bad signatures make it onto a petition page.

“As election officials, our role is to give purpose to the efforts of those Nebraskans that have signed a petition. We must also safeguard the petition process so that all Nebraskans have confidence in them,” said Todd Wiltgen, Lancaster County election commissioner.

During the news conference, Gov. Pillen emphasized his stance against out-of-state special interests and their ability to purchase access to the Nebraska ballot through pay-per-signature financial incentives. To nullify that impact, Gov. Pillen said it was important to remove aggressive quotas, thereby reducing the flood of invalid or fraudulent entries that tend to swamp local election offices during tight statutory review windows.

In addition, he stood in support of moving from a piece-rate system to an hourly compensation system. The goal of this transition is to remove direct financial incentives for meeting rapid daily requirements, and instead encourage thorough, accurate, and lawful conversations with everyday Nebraskans rather than high-speed quota chasing.

“Enforcing line-by-line verification, removing financial incentives, and supporting our dedicated county officials will continue to ensure that our ballots remain secure, transparent, and driven strictly by Nebraskans,” said Gov. Pillen.

Gov. Pillen speaks on integrity in the ballot petition process, thanking county election officials for discovering fraudulent signature pages

Sec. Evnen recognizes county election workers for their role in verifying signatures and detecting the fraudulent petition pages

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