The Summerland Advocate-Messenger - Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community

Dear editor:

Education is the key, and the fix is local.

We the people have the power to control our elections at the county level as stated in Nebraska legislature Article 3, Sec 18 of the Nebraska Constitution states: The legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following cases:

Regulating county and township offices.

Providing for the election of officers in townships, incorporated towns or cities. The opening and conducting of any election or designating the place of voting.

Our county clerk states it’s unlawful to manually count ballots.

Nebraska statute, 32-901. Ballots; voting procedure.(1) To vote for a candidate or on a ballot question using a paper ballot that is to be manually counted, the SOS rules and regs cannot override legislative statute which allows paper ballots and manual counting.

The attorney general cannot bring injunctive action against a county for using paper ballots and manually counting as it is not illegal.

32-1012: If for any reason it becomes impracticable to count all or a part of the ballots with optical scanners, the election commissioner or county clerk may direct that the ballots be counted manually following as closely as possible the provisions governing the manual counting of ballots.

Our county attorney advised the board not to vote on this issue, without providing them any statutes to base his legal advice on. Why?

When asked why our clerk is adamant about using the machines to count our ballots?

The reply, “convenience”.

Connie Baker

Antelope County