Straight Talk From Steve

The general election will be held on November 8. Please make it a point to vote. As the election date nears, the matter of election integrity is once again taking center stage. Election integrity has become such an important issue to so many Nebraska voters that today I would like to address some of the core issues which are challenging the integrity of Nebraska’s elections.

First, the Nebraska Legislature has a lot of work to do to make our elections more secure. Issues such as voter ID implementation and verification of citizenship are lacking. So, there is no question that the Legislature needs to pass better laws to make our elections more secure.

When I first came to the State Legislature six years ago, we tried to pass legislation to protect the integrity of Nebraska’s elections. Sen. John Murante was the chair of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee back in those days, and in 2018 he introduced LB 1066, a bill requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls. Sen. Murante argued that the time to act for election security was now before election integrity ever became a problem in our state. Sen. Murante was right! But, LB 1066 died in committee that year.

Those who opposed the bill argued that it would have excluded some people from voting. For example, when Lincoln Senator Adam Morfeld was asked by radio host Coby Mach on KLIN radio about who would be excluded from voting, he had to refer to a person in Wisconsin to find a single example. He cited a man who he said had been born at home, never had birth certificate, never drove a car, never worked a regular job, and who continued to live completely off the grid. Consequently, State Senators allowed the interests of an extremely small segment of the population to dictate election policy for the rest of us that year. So much for majority rule!

Since the presidential election of 2020 voter fraud has become a major issue. Many Americans believe that the 2020 election was stolen, and evidence continues to mount suggesting that we have a problem on our hands. For example, last week Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech, was arrested on allegations of storing critical election information gleaned from poll workers on servers in China.

One of the primary worries of election integrity in Nebraska relates to how we count our ballots. While each county in Nebraska is responsible for counting its own ballots, the use of ballot counting machines is mandated by state law and use of these machines has been called into question.

Nebraska currently uses ES&S ballot counting machines. Although these machines came to us without modems installed and the Secretary of State has been careful to have these machines inspected before each election, something as small as a microchip secretly implanted in the machine’s motherboard is all that it takes to change the outcome of an election. For this reason, many Nebraskans are now calling for the State to return to the days of counting paper ballots by hand.

As you can see, there are many issues concerning election integrity that the State Legislature still needs to address. Election integrity should not be a partisan issue. As a Nebraska State Senator, I understand that Nebraskans need to have faith in our elections, that the people need to know that their votes will be counted accurately, and that appropriate legislative actions still need to be taken to eliminate election fraud. Please know that I will continue to work with the State Legislature to make Nebraska’s elections fair, honest and secure.