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Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Patty Pansing Brooks announces 2026 bid to return to Nebraska Legislature
Former State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln. (Zach Wendling/Nebraska News Service) LINCOLN — Former State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks announced her 2026 candidacy Friday to return to the Nebraska Legislature, a day after the current officeholder said she would not seek reelection. State Sen. Jane Raybould of Lincoln announced her decision not to run again Thursday, leaving the central Lincoln seat open, as first reported by the Nebraska Examiner. Just 24 hours later, Pansing Brooks 'enthusiastically' threw her hat in the ring with Raybould's support, one of more than 70 current and former officials to endorse Pansing Brooks. 'People keep calling me saying, 'What should I do?'' Pansing Brooks told the Examiner. 'And I keep thinking, 'Well, what should I do to help this country right now?' The main thing that I know that I can do is run for office.' Pansing Brooks, 66, said she hopes to be an example for others to run for office and get involved in these 'very strident times.' During her first two terms in office, 2015 to 2023, Pansing Brooks said she worked to be a voice to bring people together, elevate conversations and help people see other sides to issues. If elected back to Legislative District 28, Pansing Brooks said she would continue uplifting juvenile justice reform, combatting human trafficking, defending workers' rights, protecting public education, supporting small businesses, expanding correctional programming for successful reentry and ensuring access to and equity in health care, 'right where I left off in 2022.' Among Pansing Brooks' previous successes: protecting survivors of human trafficking from prostitution charges, mandating new juvenile room confinement standards and reports and shielding survivors of sexual assault and sex trafficking before criminal charges are filed. 'There's still work to do,' she said. Pansing Brooks has a history of working with conservative colleagues, such as with former State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan on dyslexia. The pair toured schools and passed laws to increase interventions for students with dyslexia and require teachers to be educated about the disability. Pansing Brooks also worked closely with former State Sen. Tom Brewer, a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe and the Legislature's first Native member, notably to help pressure the closing of four beer stores in the village of Whiteclay in Brewer's north-central Nebraska district. For decades, the stores helped fuel alcoholism for the neighboring Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota. The duo also worked to add 'Indigenous Peoples' Day' to state law alongside Columbus Day. Brewer is one of many former conservative colleagues of Pansing Brooks to have already endorsed her 2026 campaign. Pansing Brooks, if elected, would join a handful of lawmakers to return after being term-limited. She said she knows there will be 'horrible days,' as there were before and that it might be tough. However, Pansing Brooks said, 'There's goodness and kindness to share, important laws to make and ways to support our fabulous Nebraskans.' Since 2023, the one-house Legislature has been increasingly divided on partisan lines. Pansing Brooks would return as lawmakers have a heightened focus on the LGBTQ community that she advocated for during her time in office. She had proposed legislation attempting to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation, which other senators picked up after her absence. 'I care about the rights of people to live and to be who they are, to not have prejudice against them, no matter what group they're in,' Pansing Brooks said. 'But I'm also going to be there to learn and listen and try to figure out if there's new steps where I'm needed or new issues where I'm needed, then that's what I'll do.' Another lawmaker who returned after being term-limited, former State Sen. Steve Lathrop of Omaha, declined to seek reelection in 2022, in part because of how much the institution had changed in the four years he was gone. Lathrop endorsed Pansing Brooks, with whom he served. Just one lawmaker has been term-limited twice since the voter-approved restrictions took full effect after 2006: former State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha. Pansing Brooks said that, if elected, she would not return with any assumptions that she would be treated differently than other 'newbie' lawmakers. She said she knows she would need to make new friendships and gain trust, which she's ready to do, and that Nebraska could be a model for Congress on working together. In 2022, Pansing Brooks was the Democratic candidate for Nebraska's 1st Congressional District, falling short to U.S. Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb. Flood, a former colleague, repeatedly sought to tie Pansing Brooks to national Democratic policies and party leaders. Pansing Brooks in that 2022 congressional race won her legislative district by a slightly greater percentage of votes than Raybould did that year. It is Lincoln's most progressive legislative district. A bipartisan group of former senators endorsed Pansing Brooks, including State Sens. Kathy Campbell, Bob Krist, John McCollister, DiAnna Schimek, John Stinner, Tony Vargas and Lynne Walz. She is endorsed by current State Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh, John Cavanaugh, Danielle Conrad, Wendy DeBoer, George Dungan, John Fredrickson, Dunixi Guereca, Megan Hunt, Margo Juarez, Terrell McKinney, Dan Quick, Raybould, Victor Rountree and Ashlei Spivey. All but Hunt, a nonpartisan progressive, are Democrats in the officially nonpartisan Legislature. Other early endorsements include Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson (former governors and former U.S. senators), former Nebraska Lt. Govs. Kim Robak and Maxine Moul and Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird. Pansing Brooks, who had been a Republican for much of her life until the 2000s, including a stint as Lancaster County GOP chair, said she's honored by conservative friends she made in the Legislature who have now endorsed her. 'It makes me realize that this is possible. We don't all have to be divided and in circular firing squads, just firing away at each other,' Pansing Brooks said. Pansing Brooks added that the Legislature is special and that she hopes lawmakers can continue to find common ground. 'We've done that in the past,' Pansing Brooks said. 'We can continue to do it.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democracies need more voting, not less
A voting booth is set up on the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, at Sower Church in Lincoln, Neb. (Sammy Smith/Nebraska News Service) Nebraska voters should be confident their Xs go where they are intended and are counted in the right pile. We know this from the state's previous elections being free and fair. Yet, despite the results and the facts and the accurate tabulation of votes, tinkerers remain — those who insist a sky full of hanging chads, '2,000 Mules' and bus loads of immigrants is falling. The hallmark of that body of nonbelievers (or true believers, whichever you prefer) is its lack of proof that elections in Nebraska — or anywhere else for that matter — are fraught with fraud when their candidate doesn't win. No amount of verification, substantiation or confirmation convinces them. No number of losing court cases deters them. Still, we have instances of new voter restrictions based on their beliefs. For example, without evidence, some argued the possibility of hordes of fraudulent voters would overrun our state system, leading to a new requirement of voter ID with photos. Fair enough. Although the new requirement created very few hitches in our electoral getalongs, as we've noted in this space before, if a photo ID requirement disenfranchised one voter, that's one voter too many. Apparently, Nebraska's outstanding and secure election systems still need tweaking if one believes the basis for Legislative Bill 541. If passed, LB 542 would erect further barriers to register and vote while also somehow denying the science and data on counting votes by hand, which finds hand counts less accurate than machines. The good news is that as of this writing the bill has yet to go anywhere. Nevertheless, its introduction alone is rooted in lies that the 2020 election was peppered with improprieties and, more damaging, calls into question the integrity of county election offices, local election officials and the Secretary of State's Office. Enough already. Into this miasmic mix now comes a presidential executive order unnecessarily injecting the federal government into elections. Its first section, 'Purpose and Policy,' relies on unproven assertions and outright conspiracy theories that the nation's ballot boxes are being sullied with the votes of the ineligible, especially non-citizens. Those numbers are infinitesimal if at all. Nevertheless, the order says as a country we have failed 'to enforce basic and necessary election protections.' Not according to the metrics we use to measure such things. The order came shortly after an unprecedented national security breach was uncovered, involving the administration, and the denial fiasco that followed, calling the timing into question. More problematic, however, is that the action seemed to move the federal government into a space previously reserved for states and local municipalities, countermanding or diluting their power to hold elections. That's a constitutionally bad look. In case the feds are asking, here's what it takes to register to vote in Nebraska: Be a United States citizen. Be at least 18 years of age on or before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Live in the State of Nebraska. Have not been convicted of a felony, or if convicted, have completed your sentence for the felony, including any parole term. Have not been officially found to be mentally incompetent. What remains to be seen is whether the order moves Nebraska or any other state to alter how it runs its elections, including the registration process, the actual voting, the processes used to tabulate the votes and the reporting of the results. Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evenen recently spoke in favor of the order, if only to help election officials better identify who is a citizen. But executive orders come and go as presidents come and go. Not so acts of state legislatures and Congress, which write laws. In the 2024 general election, 156,302,318 of us showed up to vote. That was 63.9 percent of those eligible to vote. If you're keeping score at home, Wisconsin led the league with nearly 77 percent turnout, while in beautiful Hawaii only half of eligible voters marked their X. Nebraska was well-represented in the turnout sweepstakes with 73.9 percent. Its 934,188 was the second-most ballots ever cast in a state election. But before we thump our chests, remember that more than a quarter of the eligibles in Nebraska stayed home. Nationally the number was more than a third. Turnout here and across the country was historically high but did nothing to dispel the usual math that a good portion of eligible voters continue to disenfranchise themselves by failing to register or to vote. Which is why, rather than littering the voting process with hurdles and hoops and questionable executive orders, we should be spending more time, money and political capital on increasing the number of voters exercising their civic duty. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nebraska lawmaker pushes to overhaul elections, early voting over integrity concerns
Teresa Ranken, 59, of Lincoln, hangs up signs reminding voters of acceptable forms of identification cards needed for voting on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, at Sower Church in Lincoln, Neb. (Sammy Smith/Nebraska News Service) LINCOLN — State Sen. Rick Holdcroft of Bellevue says he wants to eliminate online voter registration, restrict absentee voting, provide more security for ballot boxes and require hand-counting of election results, citing election integrity concerns. State and local election officials testified against Holdcroft's Legislative Bill 541 during its public hearing Wednesday before the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, questioning the need for changes to election law and raising concerns about possibly violating federal law and the potential costs to taxpayers. Other bill opponents said the changes would introduce unnecessary burdens to voters and make it harder for Nebraskans to participate in elections. Holdcroft said while he has confidence in the integrity of Nebraska elections, the bill is 'simply to give peace of mind to the electorate and our state regarding the security of our elections.' Supporters of the bill claim it would prevent voter fraud and 'cheating' in state elections, pointing to the 2020 election, when President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory but lost to former President Joe Biden. The Nebraska proposal is being discussed as Republicans across the country ramped up unproven claims of non-citizen voting and fraud. Deputy Nebraska Secretary of State Wayne Bena, who oversees the state's Elections Division, said state elections officials appreciated Holdcroft's interest in election integrity. He said Secretary of State Robert Evnen agrees with some provisions of LB 541, such as tightening security around ballot boxes, but said Evnen has practical concerns about hand counting and legal concerns about voter registration changes. '[Hand] counting, which is statistically the least reliable way that you can count ballots, add significant times and add significant cost to conducting an election,' Bena said. Tracy Overstreet, Hall County Election Commissioner, said during the hearing that the proposed changes would require her to hire more staff and violate the federal National Voting Rights Act because of the way the bill would restrict voter registration by mail. According to the bill's fiscal note, the changes Holdcroft seeks would cost the state nearly $1 million when Nebraska is facing a significant budget shortfall. Danna Seevers, who testified in support of the bill, said the committee 'should act to honor the will of the people who overwhelmingly elected Donald Trump in 2024 and carry out his agenda,' adding that LB 541 delivers on that with 'surgical precision.' Trump met with state governors late last month, including Gov. Jim Pillen, and urged them to modify their voting laws to implement paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID and proof of citizenship. However, Most states, including Nebraska, already have voter ID laws and utilize paper ballots, often as backups, and only U.S. citizens are legally allowed to vote in federal elections. 'This isn't just a bill,' Seevers said. 'It's a battle cry for election integrity that echoes Trump's call to action.' Voting advocacy groups said the bill would place unnecessary burdens on voters. 'By restricting early voting to a handful of the scenarios, voting in Nebraska will become more challenging and less convenient,' said Cesar Garcia, a Nebraska Appleseed's Community Organizer. 'As a consequence, our state will likely see lower voter turnout.' Nebraskans passed a state constitutional amendment in 2022 requiring the Legislature to implement voter ID in Nebraska. Fewer voters were turned away under the law than in other states with similar laws. The committee took no immediate action on the bill. Bena said the Secretary of State and the county election commissioners would implement the Holdcroft bill if the Legislature passes it. 'However, if you're asking our office [if] such a law is justified?' Bena said. 'The answer is no.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
