{"id":27807,"date":"2020-03-05T14:39:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T20:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27807"},"modified":"2020-03-06T15:34:40","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T21:34:40","slug":"omnibus-election-bill-advances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=27807","title":{"rendered":"Omnibus election bill advances"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bill that would keep in-person voting an option in certain counties was amended to become an omnibus election measure and advanced from general file March 5.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Tom Brewer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB1055, introduced by Sen. Tom Brewer of Gordon, would require counties that conduct elections by mail to have an in-person polling site at the office of the county clerk, at least one secure ballot drop box available for voters and in-person early voting opportunities.<\/p>\n

Currently, counties of less than 10,000 residents can apply to the state for permission to hold an election entirely by mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important for people to have the option to go to the county clerk\u2019s office, drop off a mail-in ballot or they can cast an in-person ballot,\u201d Brewer said.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tony Vargas of Omaha supported the bill, saying that he wants to assure that voters in eligible counties know they can vote in person if they wish to.<\/p>\n

A Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee amendment, adopted 42-0, added the provisions of several bills to LB1055:
\n\u2022 LB820, introduced by Brewer, which would remove \u201chome\u201d and \u201cwork\u201d phone numbers from voter application forms and make changes to the timeline for recall elections;
\n\u2022 LB1086, introduced by Sen. Matt Hansen of Lincoln, which would require poll watchers who wish to observe Election Day procedures to be either a registered voter in Nebraska or a member of a state, national or international election monitoring organization;
\n\u2022 LB1136, introduced by Sen. Matt Williams of Gothenburg, which would require members of a public power board to be governed by the Nebraska Political Accountability and Disclosure Act when dealing with conflicts of interest on board business and would repeal a law prohibiting a public power board member from having an interest in a contract to which the board is a party;
\n\u2022 LB1119, introduced by Gretna Sen. Andrew La Grone, which would prohibit special elections from being held in March of even-numbered years unless the election is in conjunction with a statewide primary election; and
\n\u2022 LB1120, also introduced by La Grone, which would prohibit special elections from being held in September of even-numbered years unless the election is in conjunction with a statewide general election.<\/p>\n

La Grone introduced an amendment, adopted 39-0, that would allow school bond special elections to be held in March and would also allow a political subdivision to hold a special election in September to either approve a property tax levy or to exceed the subdivision\u2019s property tax levy limitation.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers advanced LB1055 to select file on a 45-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bill that would keep in-person voting an option in certain counties was amended to become an omnibus election measure and advanced from general file March 5. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27800,"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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[174],"class_list":["post-27807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-tom-brewer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/LB1055Brewer3-5-20a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27807","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=27807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27846,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27807\/revisions\/27846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}