Three Petitions Claim Success

Lincoln, NE (July 7, 2022)  Today was petition turn-in day at the Nebraska State Capitol.  5 P.M. was the deadline for organizations gathering signatures and promoting measures for the November general election ballot to turn in their signed petitions.

State Senator Anna Wishart, one of the co-sponsors of the two medical marijuana petitions, says her group has been successful.

“We needed 87,000 valid signatures on each the two petitions that we will be turning in to legalize medical cannabis in the state, and we have well over 90,000 on each.”

Wishart said she was not certain that her group’s signatures included 5% of the vote totals from each of 38 different counties.

The Secretary of State’s office will begin the process of verifying both the numbers and the voter registration status of each signature.

State Senator Julie Slama of Sterling said her campaign to get a voter ID requirement on the Ballot was a success.

“Today, Citizens For Voter ID turned in over 172,000 signatures from Nebraska voters in support of putting Voter ID on the November ballot.”

A campaign to raise Nebraska’s minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $9 said Thursday that it has collected more than enough signatures to place the issue before voters in November. Raise the Wage Nebraska said it gathered 160,000 raw signatures from all 93 Nebraska counties. The measure would ratchet up the wage to $15 hourly by 2026. The first incremental increase would bump it to $10.50 an hour in January 2023.

One of the co-sponsors of a dozen measures, ranging from concealed carry to allowing the Governor to veto all regulations passed by all local governing bodies said the concealed carry measure would be close, but others did not gain enough support to turn in.  So far, their concealed carry total has not been confirmed.