In less than a month, early voting Nebraskans will cast ballots for the next president and a slate of other leaders who will make decisions that affect our lives.

Voting, unimpeded and, we hope, informed, is how we do things. And it works … even when some try to undo the results and subvert our democracy as they did in January 2021.

The calculus should point to the weeks between now and Nov. 5 as a time of contemplation for civically responsible “undecideds,” those coveted minds that apparently remain open. Some believe that given the din and drone of a presidential campaign, “undecided” is a myth.

However one feels about late-stage political bet hedgers, the big show is almost upon us. Nebraska, like at least 17 other states, has changed the way we do things since 2020, the last time we lined up all the presidential marbles.

Because of changed circumstances, I will be casting an early vote at a county election office. Normally, I like to show up at a polling place to greet my neighbors who volunteer there as we all participate in the democratic process on both sides of the voting booths in churches, schools and fire halls.

Nebraska’s big change is that now, as in the May primary, voters have to show a photo ID to cast a ballot, the election’s where and when notwithstanding. The new requirement came from a petition process and a vote of the people. Few hiccups occurred last spring, so the anticipation among county election commissioners is that sailing, at least in the picture ID waters, will also be smooth this fall.

Kudos to the Secretary of State’s Office for its campaign reminding Nebraskans that voting has new requirements, the idea plastered on billboards and shown on TV ads in the runup to the primary.

None of which negates a dubious reality: Nebraska’s photo ID requirement’s origin story, its defective conception, indeed its lineage is “The Big Lie,” the invention that the 2020 presidential election was anything other than free and fair. After buying the false premise, what followed were petitions, proposals and public policies solving voting problems that didn’t exist.

That’s why even though challenges to the results of the 2020 presidential election were proven to be whole cloth lies, conspiratorial nonsense or simply unfounded, 18 states have enacted voting restrictions in the last four years.

Nebraska is one of them, a groundless turn in our history.

Armed with neither data to underscore a problem in our voting system or evidence of widespread voter fraud, those bent on restricting access to the ballot box succeeded in peddling sketchy narratives. What they had was a story, a fable, a lie that cast doubt on the efficacy of the safest, most secure election in American history. The results were photo ID requirements, elimination of ballot drop boxes, restricting voting by mail (11 states), questionable purging of voter rolls, that sort of thing. In a nation whose history includes poll taxes and literacy requirements, any potential disenfranchising policy should bring a note of caution if not protest.

Some new voting laws came with a silver lining, however. Twenty states increased voting by mail, and a number of others made it a crime or put some teeth into laws that protect election workers from threat or harassment.

Nevertheless, we’re still narrowing access to the ballot box, the bedrock of a civil society and the one voice citizens get, regardless. As this space has said before, disenfranchising a single voter with unneeded restrictions is one voter too many.

There’s more: As of this writing the Nebraska Supreme Court is mulling whether the Legislature could enact a law, which reduced the waiting time for felons to register to vote after they had served their sentences. An opinion from the State Attorney General’s Office called the law unconstitutional and the secretary of state locked his step when he ordered election offices not to register any of the 7,000 potential voters who would be affected.

Last I checked, neither an AG’s opinion nor the chief election officer’s action based on it constitutes a law. The Nebraska Supremes will decide, essentially, whether it’s the business of the Legislature, the people’s house, if a felon’s debt to society includes an extra two years of disenfranchisement.

Inexplicably, we seem to keep restricting eligible voters. We still have a vote, however. And, after the lessons we learned from Jan. 6, 2021, this presidential election will go a long way in determining if we’re going to keep it.

Nothing undecided about that.

This story was published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Read the original article: https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/09/09/successful-voting-changes-origin-story-still-groundless/

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