LINCOLN — Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers said Friday a statewide investigation continues into “several thousand signatures” collected on ballot initiative petitions, just hours before a key deadline to include them on the November ballot.

Hilgers, a Republican, also announced at least one Grand Island man who had been hired to collect signatures for a marijuana initiative has been criminally charged. Hilgers has opposed legalizing any form of cannabis, but said the timing of his announcement coincided with the conclusion of part of his investigation and not the signature certification deadline.

“We’ve seen these irregularities implicate several thousand signatures,” Hilgers told reporters Friday. “Our work is still ongoing, we will have more to say. Today is the deadline for the Secretary of State but it is not our deadline in order to complete our work.”

Signatures not counted ‘from the get-go’

Hilgers is a former state lawmaker and has also led a statewide campaign against delta-8, which contains THC, the compound in the cannabis plant most commonly associated with getting a person high.

Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen must decide Friday whether the petitions from Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana collected enough valid signatures to be included on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Evnen said Aug. 30 that the campaign had provisionally qualified with enough valid signatures. The campaign needs about 86,500 and had 89,000 signatures as of Aug. 30, as the validation process continued. He had not yet decided the petition’s fate as of midday Friday.

Hall County Election Commissioner Tracy Overstreet confirmed to the Nebraska Examiner that the numbers Evnen used at the time did not include the ones from the man who has been criminally charged.

She said they “were flagged as fraudulent and rejected and not counted toward those totals from the get-go.”

Petition verification continues 

Hilgers said “other irregularities” are being investigated but did not specify on which petition or how many on any petition being circulated, or in which counties.

There are currently six petitions vying for a spot on the Nov. 5 ballot, and Evnen has certified four of them. Three were successful Friday morning against legal challenges, and medical marijuana faces its own, including claims against valid signatures.

Should the petitions be placed on the ballot, and enough signatures knocked off in that time frame, Hilgers said, the outcome of his investigation might mean the new laws won’t take effect.

“The integrity of our elections transcends ideology. It transcends policy issues. It transcends party,” Hilgers said. “This is about making sure that Nebraskans have confidence in our election system.”

Petition pages are turned in to the Secretary of State’s Office four months before the general election they seek to be printed on. Local election officials then count and validate the signatures according to state law, not state officials.

Signatures are regularly tossed from the count if local officials determine they are not valid, including for any of the other petitions in circulation this cycle. Klein said officials must link any irregularities back to a specific person in order to pursue charges.

“Petition circulators and voters alike should know and understand that this office — and all election offices across Nebraska — take elections and signature verification very seriously,” Overstreet said in a statement. “We go through each petition line by line by line, signature by signature — just like we do for signatures on early voting ballot envelopes.”

‘Wouldn’t matter what the petition would be’ 

Hilgers said Nebraskans should be confident that election or law enforcement officials who identify any instance of fraud or wrongdoing will investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute. 

He said it is up to Evnen to determine the legal sufficiency of the ballot measures.

Asked whether every other petition circulating in Nebraska this cycle is being given the same scrutiny — those related to abortion, private K-12 school vouchers and paid sick leave — Hilgers said: “We have a process, and it applies to everyone equally and fairly.”

“I can absolutely tell you definitively, with 100% certainty, no matter what the petition was, if we had evidence of signature fraud, the same kind of evidence that we have in this case. Absolutely wouldn’t matter what the petition would be,” Hilgers said.

Hilgers said he and other local officials are on the lookout for fraud, but he is unaware of other irregularities that have at least been brought to his office. He cautioned “that doesn’t mean I’ve blessed the process of any other petitions.”

Marijuana signature case

Hilgers and Hall County Attorney Martin Klein announced that Michael K. Egbert, 66, had been charged with allegedly collecting at least 200 fraudulent signatures. Egbert allegedly did so across 38 signature pages spread between two medical marijuana-related petitions to respectively legalize and regulate the drug between Feb. 9 and June 30.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed Thursday, Egbert said in an Aug. 30 interview he had been working as a paid petition circulator and was paid by the hour, mostly in Hall County.  Egbert allegedly said at the time he submitted “well over 100 pages” of signatures.

“He had in fact written names down, gone out into a phone book and got names of individuals with addresses here in the Grand Island, Hall County area,” Klein told reporters.

The affidavit charged Egbert with making up wrong dates of birth and listing up to eight voters who had died on each petition. 

Hilgers said the count of alleged fraudulent signatures is “not a static, firm number.”

Egbert is charged with false swearing to a circulator’s affidavit on a ballot petition, a Class IV felony. The penalty ranges from probation to up to two years in prison, and up to a $10,000 fine.

The case has been assigned to Judge Arthur S Wetzel. Egbert will be arraigned Oct. 2 in Hall County.

Egbert’s attorney, Robert Alexander, who sat in on an interview with Egbert and local officials on Sept. 10, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At that interview, according to the affidavit, Egbert said he would leave his petitions unattended and did not sign his circulator’s calculator’s oath in the presence of a notary.

Crista Eggers, statewide campaign manager for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, said in a statement that all circulators are given “extensive training.” She thanked Klein and Hilgers for looking into any irregularities and working to protect the integrity of the public initiative process.

“Circulators are held to an extremely high standard and are required to strictly follow all legal requirements for collecting signatures,” Eggers said in a statement. “Any circulators caught violating the law should be held accountable for their actions.”

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