The high court of Nebraska says that people with felony records can still register to vote. This ruling will have an effect on the next election.
The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled this week that the state’s top election official did not have the power to take away the voting rights of people who had been convicted of a crime. This could add hundreds of new voters to the rolls and possibly change the outcome of the election on November 5.
The United States Civil Liberties Union says that Bob Evnen’s order could have kept at least 7,000 Nebraskans from voting in the upcoming election. Many of them live in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which is focused on Omaha. This is an area where both the presidency and the makeup of Congress could be at stake.
In July, Evnen told county election officials in Nebraska to not let people who had been convicted of a crime register to vote, citing a statement from the state attorney general. That opinion, which Evnen had asked for, said that a law passed by the Legislature this year that lets people who have finished their felony sentences vote right away again was illegal.
In the high court’s decision, Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman said, “Patty and Selma at the Dept. of Motor Vehicles might not be constitutional scholars, but they understand that they are expected to follow the law.”
She was criticizing Evnen and Attorney General Mike Hilgers for saying the law was unconstitutional on their own.
“Do we really want to live in a world where any state worker who thinks a law is wrong can ignore it?”
Nebraska is mostly Republican, but it is one of only two states (the other being Maine) that divides its Electoral College votes by congressional district. Barack Obama won the district’s one vote in 2008, and Joe Biden got it again in 2020. There are two districts in the Omaha area. Polls show that the race for president in 2024 will be very close. One electoral vote could decide the winner.
After the district’s lines were changed in 2021, there are now more Republicans than Democrats by more than 13,000. But there are also about 114,000 voters in the area who don’t vote for any party. Biden beat former President Trump there by more than 22,000 votes in 2020.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Democratic groups have spent a lot more money than Trump and Republican groups to get that important electoral vote.
