Casino gambling in Nebraska off limits

The amendment came up well short of the number of valid signatures needed to make the ballot, he said.

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The proposal needed to have 117,188 signatures from registered Nebraska voters, or 10 percent of the total number registered as of July 7

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But county election officials were able to verify 77,956 signatures, while rejecting 41,710 signatures, Gale said.

While the total number of signatures fell short, the petition drive met the requirement for collecting signatures from at least 5 percent of voters in at least 38 counties.

Based on a preliminary analysis, Gale said the largest number of rejected signatures were from people who were not registered to vote in Nebraska or in the county indicated on the petition sheet.

“That accounted for more than 24,000 signature rejections,” Gale said.

Nearly 4,600 additional signatures were duplicates, and more than 3,000 signatures were rejected because the signers’ voter registration had been removed from the system.

In some counties, such as Banner, Kimball, and Sheridan, the number of accepted signatures equaled the number of rejected. No counties had less than a 50 percent validity rate.

The county with the highest validity rate was Grant County with nearly 91 percent of signatures accepted. The average validity rate among all counties was just over 65 percent.

Gale said he requested that county election officials verify signatures for the constitutional amendment first.

Now, they will finish verifying signatures for two related measures. They propose state laws to regulate the expanded gambling and to spell out how tax revenues would be divided

But without constitutional authorization, the laws could not be implemented.