Public school advocates have collected enough signatures to ask voters to repeal a new law that uses taxpayer money to fund private school tuition., according to Nebraska’s top election official.
Organizers of Support Our Schools announced in July that they had gathered more than 86,000 signatures of registered voters — well over the nearly 62,000 needed to get the repeal on the ballot. Signatures also had to be collected from 5% of the registered voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties to qualify for the ballot.
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Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen confirmed Friday that just more than 62,000 signatures had been verified and that the 5% threshold had been met in 57 counties.
It is the second time ahead of the November election that public school advocates have had to carry out a signature-gathering effort to try to reverse the use of public money for private school tuition. The first came last year, when Republicans who dominate the officially nonpartisan Nebraska Legislature passed a bill to allow corporations and individuals to divert millions of dollars they owe in state income taxes to nonprofit organizations. Those organizations would, in turn, award that money as private school tuition scholarships.
Support Our Schools collected far more signatures last summer than was needed to ask voters to repeal that law. But the effort was thwarted by lawmakers who support the private school funding bill when they repealed the original law and replaced it earlier this year with another funding law. The new law dumped the tax credit funding system and simply funds private school scholarships directly from state coffers.
Because the move repealed the first law, it rendered last year’s successful petition effort moot, requiring organizers to again collect signatures to try to stop the funding scheme.
Nebraska's new law follows several other conservative Republican states — including Arkansas, Iowa and South Carolina — in enacting some form of private school choice, from vouchers to education savings account programs.
Both opponents and supporters of the Nebraska private school funding measure have said they expect the fight to end up in court.
Evnen said county election officials are still in the process of verifying signatures on the petitions, and so the repeal measure has not yet been officially certified for the ballot. If the count reaches 110% of the total number of signatures needed, officials will stop verifying signatures and certify it.
The deadline to certify the November ballot is Sept. 13.