For several months we have presented information on the petitions in circulation in our "To Sign or Not to Sign, That is the Question" series.  Only a few of those petitions acquired enough signatures to even be considered.  Currently all the county clerks and/or county election offices are verifying signatures on those petitions. 

Much of the following information was acquired from a Plains Sentinel article that you can access in full, here.

Three separate groups have announced that they have turned in signatures for their ballot initiatives, including:

“Tax Relief Nebraska,” a pair of initiatives that would legalize and regulate sports betting in Nebraska; (Our information for this initiative is still available at this "Property Tax" Blog, scroll down to "sports betting.")

“Fairness for Girls,” a constitutional amendment that would ban biological males from competing in girls’ sports; (Our information for this initiative is still available at this Election Issues Blog, scroll down to "#3 Protect Nebraskans' Initiative and Referendum Powers Constitutional Amendment.")

“Respect Nebraska Voters,” a constitutional amendment that would raise the threshold for lawmakers to change previously approved ballot initiatives. (Our information for this initiative is still available at this Election Issues Blog, scroll down to "#3 Fairness for Girls Constitutional Amendment.")

All three initiatives still need signature verification, but each is expected to have enough signatures to make the November ballot, barring any potential legal disputes from opponents.

All three initiative groups have raised significant amounts of money. “Fairness for Girls” has raised over $3 million, “Tax Relief Nebraska” has raised over $7 million, and “Respect Nebraska Voters” has raised over $2 million.

Other initiative measures fell short of making the ballot, including proposals to cut property taxes, require hand-counted ballots for elections, an initiative to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state, an initiative to declare the personhood of unborn children.

In a future blog, we will address the other initiative that will appear on the November ballot.  This one has been added to the ballot by the Legislature.  This is a constitutional amendment to modify term limits for state legislators. Currently, state senators are limited to two consecutive terms, but the constitutional amendment, introduced by State Sen. Rob Dover, would change the constitution to allow senators to have three consecutive terms. The measure made the ballot after a 39-10 vote in the Legislature.

Nebraskans passed the state’s original term limit amendment in 2000, by a margin of 56% to 44%.