Campaign trail leads Gale to Sidney

Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale, traveling with his wife, Carol, made Sidney an early stop on his reelection campaign trail. The secretary, who is running for his fourth term, announced his candidacy last week.

“I feel I have a rare opportunity to offer my background to the citizens.”

Gale is a fifth generation Nebraskan. He spent his childhood in western Nebraska before completing high school in Omaha and a law degree at the University of Chicago. He served as a federal prosecutor, lived in three state congressional districts and was appointed to his post by then governor Mike Johanns.

He admits the role of Secretary of State is hardly glamorous, compared to many elected offices.

“Its not a policy making job like a governor's job or attorney general's job,” he explained. “They’re really on the front lines, the cutting edge of a lot of policy decisions; this is a very administrative job.”

As Secretary of State, Gale serves on the Pardons Board, the Real Estate Commision, the Records Board, the Collection and Licensing Board and he oversees elections. These bodies ensure state policies are implemented and work to eliminate problems in the system.

“My background as a lawyer has helped me immensely to be an effective leader on the boards and commission that I serve on,” Gale said. “I feel like I have been a real effective change-maker in all these boards.”

Mistakes—particularly during the election process or when considering the release of prisoners—can become public issues. During his term as Secretary of State, he estimates he has attended some 10,000 pardon and commutation hearings. And he spent time researching voting booth technology.

“People expect this office to be above politics,” Gale explained. “We’ve got a great reputation nationwide of having a very sound and secure election system.”

Nebraska purchased and maintains electronic tabulation equipment, both to eliminate hand counting error and ease some of the financial burdens of elections from the counties.

“We feel like we have done our best to be a good partner with our counties,” Gale said. “Without that we wouldn’t have such a uniformed statewide system. People cast their ballots the same way and the ballots are counted the same way, we can say we have a integrated and uniformed election system in Nebraska—that's very important to me.”

Several state have considered adopting new voter identification rules. Despite the lack of serious fraud in Nebraska, Gale expressed an interest in security.

“We have done our own study over the last year trying to figure out how we can tighten up our voter registration and tighten up our voting system without imposing the burden on every voting citizen to have photo ID when they vote,” he said. “The complication is that can discourage legitimately registered citizens from voting.”