Three Nebraska gambling petitions won’t make the November ballot
The petitions aimed at letting Nebraskans decide whether to legalise casino gambling have failed to reach valid signature threshold.
US.- All three petitions aimed at letting Nebraskans decide whether to legalise casino gambling at the state’s thoroughbred horse racing tracks failed to reach valid signature threshold.
According to Secretary of State John Gale, two petitions proposing laws to implement the casino plan would not make the November ballot as each failed to get enough valid signatures to go before voters.
Earlier this month, Gale announced that another petition which proposed a constitutional amendment authorising expanded gambling, failed for the same reason.
All three suffered from a higher-than-normal error rate in collecting signatures, such as duplicate signatures and signatures from people who weren’t registered voters or who signed petitions for a county in which they were not registered.
Each petition needed 80,032 valid signatures, or 7 percent of the number of registered voters as of July 7. Gale said the petition to regulate casinos at racetracks had 73,617 signatures from which, 51,993 signatures turned out to be valid. The petition spelling out how casino tax revenues would be divided had 78,157 signatures. Of those, 54,854 signatures were valid. Finally, he petition for a constitutional amendment showed similar results.
On the other hand, Keep the Money in Nebraska, the pro-gambling group that sponsored the petitions, reported that it had collected about 90,000 on each of those petitions. Whilst Keep the Money in Nebraska said it turned in about 130,000 signatures, Gale said the petition had 119,666 total signatures. County election officials tossed out more than 41,000 signatures as invalid.
