Hand-Counting, Mail-In Ballots, and Early Voting Take Center Stage in Secretary of State Race

by Matt Johnson

(Photo credit Matt Johnson)

Nebraska will have a new secretary of state next year. Republican Scott Petersen and Democrat Sarah Slattery are both traveling the state, campaigning to succeed incumbent Bob Evnen.

Petersen describes himself as a “sales and marketing guy,” with businesses in printing and political consulting that he sold prior to running for office.

Slattery has a degree in graphic design from Creighton University and a culinary arts degree from Metropolitan Community College. She works as a “chef supreme” for her family’s vineyard and tasting room in Nehawka and has awards for the “best salsa in Cass County” and in the “Midwest Best Bloody Mary” contest.

Transparency and Hand-Counting

Petersen won an upset primary victory over Evnen in May, a win he attributes to a loss of faith in Nebraska’s elections. Petersen made election integrity a key issue in his platform.

“The folks that were concerned about elections weren’t getting the answers they needed from the current secretary of state,” Petersen said. “Being transparent and making sure the people restore that confidence in election systems—that was the whole campaign.”

Questions regarding security over ballot-tabulation machines had been fuel for election skeptics since 2020. During the primary, Petersen touted hand-counting paper ballots at the county level as “project number one” as a part of restoring this trust.

“Hand-count paper ballots is probably the ultimate answer to full transparency,” Petersen told The Plains Sentinel. “There’s a path to get there, and there’s a lot of things you can do on the way, but number one is just answering questions and being as transparent as possible.”

Slattery strongly disagrees with hand counting.

“People suck at counting stuff,” Slattery said. “When people hand-count ballots, there’s up to a 25% error rate, and that’s terrifying, right? Why would we do that when we have these machines that are built to count, and that’s all they’re built to do. And they work great, and they’re tested, and they’re audited, and everything runs like it’s supposed to.”

Mail-In Ballots

Another issue for Petersen is Nebraska’s 35-day election window, which he believes allows for ballot harvesting fueled by outside dollars.

“We have 35 days of mail-in balloting here in Nebraska, and it does corrupt our elections by encouraging outside money to come in, especially to Omaha and Lincoln,” Petersen said. “And they send outside forces—send money and people in to collect votes, harvest votes, if you want to call it that.”

While Petersen would allow a 10-day early voting window, his ideal solution would be to go back to a one-day election with “true absentee voting” by mail. This would be reserved for specific cases, such as those serving in the military or those who are physically unable to travel to election sites.

Slattery also takes issue with this, specifically the mail-in ballots, citing Nebraska’s 11 counties with only mail-in ballots.

“There are 11 counties in Nebraska that only vote by mail, because they’re so rural,” Slattery said. “And a fun fact about that is those 11 counties return their ballots at twice the rate of the rest of the state. So that’s, to me, an argument for mail-in voting, not against it.”

Petersen pointed out that those counties sided with him overwhelmingly in the primary. Results showed that he beat Evnen in 10 of the 11 all-mail counties with an average of +13.8 percentage points compared to 10% statewide.

Election Day or Election Month?

Slattery is in favor of Nebraska keeping its long voting window, suggesting it is too difficult for some working Nebraskans to make it to the polls.

“Unless we get a federal or a statewide holiday to give everybody the day off to go vote, that’s disenfranchising working people,” Slattery said.

Petersen supports the idea of making Election Day a holiday.

“All in on that. It is a special day—it would give everybody an opportunity to vote,” Petersen said. “If you have a job, and you’re not able to get to the polling place in those hours, that’d be a challenge. So there’s a lot of good things with turning it into a holiday. President Trump, I think, has talked about it, so I would probably support that.”

Slattery also advocates for same-day voter registration.

“Iowa does it. Colorado does it. It reduces litigation in regard to voter registrations, and then, if you accidentally got taken off, you can re-register and vote on the same day,” Slattery said. “And I think we can all agree that Iowa and Colorado have drastically different political ideologies, and it works for both of them, so I think it could work here, too.”

Petersen disagrees, calling the idea a “disaster.”

“Iowa has same-day registration, and I helped out in the caucuses years back. And it’s a disaster, because people can walk in and change parties, and it just makes a big mess of Election Day. You talk about trouble and challenges for the poll workers—same-day registration would absolutely be a disaster and create a lot of chaos, I think, at the polling places.”

Voter Data and Cleaning the Rolls

Earlier this year, the Trump administration requested voter registration information from various states for vetting purposes. Evnen submitted these earlier this year after a lawsuit brought by Common Cause to prevent their transfer was litigated. Slattery says that she would not have turned the data over.

“And that’s what I promise to do, what’s best for all of Nebraskans,” Slattery said. “States run elections. The federal government doesn’t have any business doing any of this. And I wouldn’t have given the data. I would have stood up for us and our information.”

Petersen said there is no data being transmitted that the federal government would not normally have anyway, and he emphasized the need for Nebraska’s voter rolls to be thoroughly vetted.

“I keep hearing stories and more stories about, ‘Hey, my son moved away 10 years ago, and I’m still getting ballots,’” Petersen said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of tools, especially with the federal government offering up the SAVE database. There’s a lot of tools that we can use to do a better job of cleaning voter rolls.”

With fewer than 75 days before the general election, both candidates will be busy campaigning across the state. Election Day is November 3.

— Matt Johnson is a freelance reporter with The Plains Sentinel.