LINCOLN, Neb. – Nebraska voters will choose between two competing abortion measures to either expand abortion rights or limit them to the current 12-week ban — a development likely to drive more voters to the polls in a state that could see one of its five electoral votes up for grabs in the hotly contested presidential race.
Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen announced Friday that the rival initiatives each gathered enough signatures to get on the November ballot, making Nebraska the first state to carry competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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Nebraska also becomes the last of several states to put an abortion measure on the November ballot, including the swing states of Arizona and Nevada where abortion ballot measures could drive higher voter turnout. Others are Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and South Dakota. New York has a measure that supporters say will effectively guarantee access, though it doesn’t mention abortion specifically.
In Nebraska, organizers of the competing efforts announced last month that they turned in far more signatures than the approximately 123,000 required.
One of the initiatives, like measures on ballots elsewhere in the U.S., would enshrine in the state constitution the right to have an abortion until viability or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. Organizers said they submitted more than 207,000 signatures.
The other measure would write into the constitution the current 12-week ban, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the pregnant woman. Organizers said they submitted more than 205,000 signatures.
Evnen said his office validated more than 136,000 signatures for both proposals.
Organizers of a third effort, which would have effectively banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy and defined embryos as people, did not submit petitions.
It’s possible voters could end up approving both measures, but because they’re competing and therefore cannot both be enshrined in the constitution, the one that gets the most “for” votes will be the one adopted, Evnen said.
Evnen's office said that if both measures are approved by voters, Gov. Jim Pillen is responsible for determining whether there is a conflict. Asked if there is a scenario in which the Republican governor could order the measure that gets the lesser number of votes to be enshrined in the constitution, Evnen's office said it didn't see how that could occur, but added it could not speak for the governor.
Asked the same question, Pillen's office said it would not “comment on a hypothetical future legal issue," but hedged on ensuring that the measure with the most votes would be written into the state constitution.
“The overwhelming majority of Nebraskans support strong constitutional protections for the unborn, so the Governor expects only the pro-life initiative to prevail,” Laura Strimple, a spokeswoman for Pillen, said in an email to The Associated Press. “In any other scenario, the Governor will consult with the Attorney General as to his legal duties.”
Most Republican-controlled states have implemented abortion bans of some sort since Roe was overturned, which ended 50 years of the right to abortion across the U.S. But abortion rights supporters have prevailed in all seven ballot questions on the issue that have gone before voters at the state level since 2022.
That tracks with public opinion polling that has shown growing support for abortion rights, including a recent Associated Press-NORC survey that found 6 in 10 Americans think their state should allow someone to obtain a legal abortion if they don’t want to be pregnant for any reason.
Fourteen states currently have bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions; four ban it after about six weeks, which is before many women know they are pregnant. Nebraska and North Carolina are the only states that have opted for bans that kick in after 12 weeks of pregnancy.
In Nebraska, abortion could play an outsize role in the Omaha-centered 2nd Congressional District for both the U.S. House and presidential races.
The House race — a rematch between Republican Rep. Don Bacon against Democratic challenger and state Sen. Tony Vargas — is widely regarded as neck-and-neck. Bacon defeated Vargas in 2022 by fewer than 3 percentage points, and Vargas has outraised him during this campaign with $300,000 more in cash on hand according to the latest campaign finance reports released last month.
In the presidential election, increased voter turnout could boost Vice President Kamala Harris to pick off the district’s lone electoral vote. Nebraska is one of two states that splits its electoral votes, and while the state overall is reliably Republican, the Omaha district is competitive.
The 2nd District has twice awarded its electoral vote to a Democratic presidential candidate — to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Joe Biden in 2020.