{"id":33964,"date":"2023-03-24T09:11:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T15:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33964"},"modified":"2023-03-24T09:11:49","modified_gmt":"2023-03-24T15:11:49","slug":"bills-would-require-election-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=33964","title":{"rendered":"Bills would require election changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard combined testimony on a trio of bills March 22 that would make changes to Nebraska\u2019s election laws.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Rick Holdcroft<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB457, sponsored by Bellevue Sen. Rick Holdcroft, would require video surveillance of voting areas and implementation of anti-counterfeiting ballot techniques, including a watermark, a holograph and other techniques used to protect U.S. paper currency.<\/p>\n

The bill also would require that any vote scanning device or tabulating equipment be verified and certified by election officials to be incapable of executing any embedded code or triggers on scanned ballots.<\/p>\n

Holdcroft said he believes that Nebraska\u2019s elections are more secure than those in most other states, but that more needs to be done to instill faith among voters in the integrity of the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizens need to be able to verify that their vote was counted as it was cast, and an effective way to do that is to add serial numbers to the ballots,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

LB193, introduced by Hastings Sen. Steve Halloran, would prohibit any voting system or component from being purchased or used unless designed, manufactured, integrated and assembled in the U.S. from entities accredited by the U.S. Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

Halloran said approximately 20 percent of software and hardware components in election equipment comes from suppliers in China. Having parts that are made in America would help restore public trust in elections, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we allow our voting system to remain open in this way to foreign adversaries, they are potentially vulnerable to exploitation,\u201d Halloran said.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Steve Halloran<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He also introduced LB808, which would permit election commissioners and county clerks to conduct a hand count for tabulating votes cast in any election. The bill also would allow an apparent loser at a general election to request and receive a hand recount.<\/p>\n

Danna Severs, chairperson of the Seward County Republican Party, testified in favor of all three proposals. She said an election audit conducted by the secretary of state\u2019s office that she participated in revealed flaws in oversight of the state\u2019s elections. One reason, she said, was that county clerks had advance notice of which precincts would be audited.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know the other 92 clerks across the state,\u201d she said. \u201cIf they know, and they have a week \u2014 and the boxes are open when you arrive \u2014 how is that an audit?\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg Epp also testified in support, although he said all three bills could go further.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur elections lack transparency, in my opinion, and election integrity \u2026 is the most important issue that will come before this Legislature,\u201d Epp said.<\/p>\n

Arlo Hettle testified against all three proposals on behalf of the Nebraska Civic Engagement Table. The current manufacturer of Nebraska\u2019s election equipment is based in Omaha, he said, and the machines go through extensive testing.<\/p>\n

He said the cost to implement the three bills would be better spent making polling places accessible to Nebraskans with disabilities and addressing other voter needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese bills are proposed solutions that would make our election system more expensive and less accurate,\u201d Hettle said.<\/p>\n

Also testifying in opposition was William Davenport of Lincoln, a former election judge. Davenport questioned the feasibility of installing surveillance cameras in polling places, most of which are not government property. Doing so would invade voters\u2019 privacy and perpetuate the false narrative that election workers are manipulating votes \u2014\u00a0something that there is no evidence of in Nebraska, he said.<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on any of the bills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard combined testimony on a trio of bills March 22 that would make changes to Nebraska\u2019s election laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33945,"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":[281],"class_list":["post-33964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-rick-holdcroft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/LB457Holdcroft3-22-23a.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33964","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=33964"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33966,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33964\/revisions\/33966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}