Nebraskans get more than enough signatures for vote to bring back death penalty

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty announced Wednesday that they have gathered enough signatures to force a repeal vote on the newly enacted state law eliminating capital punishment.

Organizers said they gathered 166,692 petition signatures in 82 days, which would be enough if declared valid to place the measure on the November 2016 ballot and block the newly enacted law from going into effect Sunday.

The signatures must still be validated in the next 40 days by the Nebraska Secretary of State. The death-penalty ban goes into effect Sunday.

“Nebraskans sent a strong message about crime and punishment in our state by signing this petition in extraordinary numbers,” said Don Stenberg, Nebraska’s state treasurer and former attorney general, in a statement.

The group needs 57,000 valid signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot and double that to prevent the law from taking effect prior to the vote.

“If Nebraskans weren’t overwhelmingly supportive of capital punishment, it would not have been possible to gather this many signatures in less than 12 weeks,” Mr. Stenberg said. “I believe it’s especially important to have overshot the 10 percent figure by this margin to make it clear that the repeal of the death penalty will not become law until voters have spoken at the ballot box and to limit new avenues for appeal of death penalty sentences.”

A traditionally red state, Nebraska shocked many onlookers earlier this year when its unicameral, non-partisan state legislature approved a death-penalty repeal, then overrode Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto.

More