Lawmakers voted Feb. 18 to bracket a bill that would require voter identification in Nebraska, effectively ending debate on the issue this session.<\/p>\n
LB111, as introduced by O\u2019Neill Sen. Tyson Larson, would require voters to provide a government-issued photographic identification before voting. Under the bill, either a driver\u2019s license or state ID card issued by the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) would be required.<\/p>\n
If a voter indicates that he or she is indigent, the DMV would offer a state identification card at no cost for purposes of voting under the Election Act.<\/p>\n
Larson said Nebraskans overwhelmingly support requiring ID to vote as a means of safeguarding the electoral process.<\/p>\n
Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers offered a motion to bracket LB111 until June 5, saying the bill\u2019s primary purpose is vote suppression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no right more treasured in a democracy than the right to vote,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Omaha Sen. John McCollister supported the bracket motion, saying studies have shown that voter fraud is not an issue in Nebraska. As a result, he said, the bill would send the wrong message.<\/p>\n
\u201cLB111 is unmistakable,\u201d McCollister said, \u201cit would indicate that Nebraska wants to disenfranchise voters\u2014and we certainly don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The motion was approved on a 25-15 vote, making the bill unlikely to be debated again this session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawmakers voted Feb. 18 to bracket a bill that would require voter identification in Nebraska, effectively ending debate on the<\/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":[110],"class_list":["post-16415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-tyson-larson"],"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\/16415","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=16415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16417,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16415\/revisions\/16417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}