A political party member seeking election to a partisan office could not sit out the primary election and mount a petition campaign under a bill amended and advanced from select file April 26.<\/p>\n
LB449, introduced by Sen. John Nelson of Omaha, contains a number of changes to election laws. Among other provisions, it originally would have declared persons registered with a political party as of March 1 in a general election year ineligible for nomination by petition for a partisan office. This provision was removed by a Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee amendment on general file.<\/p>\n
On select file, Nelson brought an amendment that would prevent a person who is registered to vote with a party affiliation on or before March 1 in a general election year from pursuing a petition campaign or accepting a party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n
Nelson said his amendment would ensure that \u201cnormal and reasonable selection procedures\u201d associated with elections are not circumvented. He said his amendment would not affect independent campaigns or processes for filling vacancies.<\/p>\n
Lincoln Sen. Bill Avery opposed Nelson\u2019s amendment, citing a 1977 court decision by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Avery said the court declared that state laws restricting voters\u2019 choices on election ballots must be justified by a compelling state interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI, quite frankly, don\u2019t know what the compelling state interest is in this particular amendment,\u201d Avery said.<\/p>\n
Omaha Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh said Nelson\u2019s amendment does not require a compelling state interest because it affects only the process for becoming a party\u2019s nominee.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve already set up a partisan election process in certain races and this simply clarifies how you become that nominee,\u201d Lautenbaugh said.<\/p>\n
Nelson\u2019s amendment was adopted 25-5 and LB449 advanced from select file on a voice vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A political party member seeking election to a partisan office could not sit out the primary election and mount a<\/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":[83],"class_list":["post-4455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-john-nelson"],"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\/4455","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=4455"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10257,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4455\/revisions\/10257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}