Lawmakers passed a bill March 27 that establishes new guidelines for election practices.<\/p>\n
LB946, introduced by Gretna Sen. John Murante, makes numerous changes to the Election Act, including:
\n\u2022 delaying from noon to 8 p.m. on election day the deadline for a voter to return the statement declaring the original early ballot was lost;
\n\u2022 allowing the election commissioner or county clerk to mail a notice explaining how to obtain a ballot in place of a ballot to all registered voters who have been sent a notice and failed to respond in a special election by mail;
\n\u2022 allowing for a special election for a Class IV or Class V school district to be held in conjunction with the primary or general election for a city of the primary or metropolitan class which is governed by a home rule charter;
\n\u2022 requiring that workers appointed to the counting board for the purpose of counting ballots for school district bonds receive minimum wage; and
\n\u2022 changing reporting thresholds in the Nebraska Political Accountability and Disclosure Act.<\/p>\n
The bill includes provisions of six other bills:
\n\u2022 LB167, introduced by Omaha Sen. Beau McCoy, which requires presidential electors to take a pledge and cast a ballot for the presidential and vice presidential candidates who receive the highest number of votes in their district;
\n\u2022 LB219, introduced by Avery, which allows any registered voter\u2014who was not a candidate in the primary election and who was not registered to vote with a party affiliation on or after March 1 and before the general election in the calendar year of the general election\u2014to have his or her name placed on the general election ballot for a partisan office by filing a petition or by political party convention or committee nomination;
\n\u2022 LB726, introduced by Norfolk Sen. Jim Scheer, which changes the number of school board members for Class II and Class III school districts and outlines their election procedures;
\n\u2022 LB743, introduced by Murante, which specifies when the second half of an elected official\u2019s term begins;
\n\u2022 LB833, introduced by Fullerton Sen. Annette Dubas, which defines how county surveyors can be elected or appointed; and
\n\u2022 LB1084, introduced by Bellevue Sen. Tommy Garrett, which clarifies how city council vacancies are filled.<\/p>\n
The bill passed on a 43-0 vote and will go into effect Jan. 1, 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers passed a bill March 27 that establishes new guidelines for election practices. LB946, introduced by Gretna Sen. John Murante,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[113],"class_list":["post-15374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-john-murante"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15374"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15787,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15374\/revisions\/15787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}