Increased voter engagement is the focus of a bill heard by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee Jan. 23.<\/p>\n
Under LB41, introduced by Omaha Sen. Tanya Cook, county election commissioners and clerks would be required to:
\n\u2022 maintain a permanent early voting request list;
\n\u2022 outline procedures for the permanent early voting request list; and
\n\u2022 establish that a ballot received for early voting by mail may be returned by hand to the registered voter’s designated polling place on the day of the election.<\/p>\n
Cook said access to early voting mechanisms would strengthen and preserve the democratic election process by increasing voter turnout.<\/p>\n
\u201cEarly voting by mail is vital to the continued participation by all voting groups, including the growing elderly population and service men and women,\u201d she said. \u201cThis bill will help these Nebraskans continue their engagement with our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nebraskans for Civic Reform director Adam Morfeld testified in support of LB41. He said the bill would increase voter turnout in all elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cIncreased accessibility to elections should always be a priority,\u201d Morfeld said. \u201cWhen people automatically receive ballots, we see increased voter turnout in smaller or off-cycle elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wayne Bena, Sarpy County election commissioner, testified in opposition to the bill saying local control should decide early voting procedures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be the decision of the county election commissioner and the county board if they have the means and resources to maintain a permanent list,\u201d he said. \u201cThere may be no fiscal impact to the state, but there is definitely a fiscal impact to my office.\u201d<\/p>\n
The committee took no immediate action on the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Increased voter engagement is the focus of a bill heard by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee Jan. 23.<\/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":[115],"class_list":["post-8252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-tanya-cook"],"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\/8252","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=8252"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13161,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions\/13161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}