Nebraska group starts ballot push for winner-take-all, hand-counting votes

Eric Underwood, former chair of the Nebraska Republican Party and leader of the nonprofit Advocates For All Nebraskans, speaks in Lincoln on Oct 14, 2025. (Juan Salinas II/Nebraska Examiner)

LINCOLN — A nonprofit group behind a handful of Nebraska ballot initiatives announced a campaign Tuesday to gather signatures for two new ones aimed at conservative election goals. 

One would alter how the state awards Electoral College votes for president, giving all five to the winner of the popular vote statewide. The other would require elections in the state to be conducted exclusively using paper ballots counted by hand.

The group, Advocates for All Nebraskans, is now collecting signatures for five ballot initiatives. The group, headlined by former leaders of the Nebraska Republican Party, argues that the initiatives are about reclaiming the state’s voice and promoting government accountability.

“This is not a partisan movement … This is a populist movement,” said Eric Underwood, the former chair of the Nebraska GOP who helped lead a populist takeover of the party in 2022. “We exist because many of us grew tired of waiting for solutions from the traditional status quo elected officials or political consultants.” 

Underwood, along with State Board of Education member Kirk Penner, former Nebraska State Patrol Superintendent Tom Nesbitt and former Lincoln talk radio host Doug Fitzgerald, are behind efforts to get the measures and constitutional amendments on the ballot in 2026. Group leaders say each proposal has grassroots support.

The winner-take-all constitutional amendment is identical to State Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams’ legislative resolution this year on letting voters decide whether to shift the state to winner-take-all, which did not get scheduled for a vote. A separate proposal to make the change in statute from State Sen. Loren Lippincott, Legislative Bill 3, fell to a filibuster.

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Nebraska is one of just two states — Maine is the other — that parse out some electoral votes by the winner in each congressional district. Winner-take-all has been on local conservative wish lists for decades, as Democrats have grown increasingly competitive in the Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District. It has seen a resurgence as Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen tried and failed to get it passed. 

Pillen did a full-court press for a winner-take-all ahead of the 2024 presidential election — with President Donald Trump getting personally involved in calling and lobbying lawmakers, but the effort died after former Democratic State Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha, who had joined the GOP, opposed the change.

Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb said, “Nebraskans made it clear last year they support our fair electoral system.” Kleeb and the Democrats have argued that Republicans only want to change the rules because the GOP keeps losing in the 2nd District, where Democrats have won three out of the last five presidential elections.

“Our elected officials should instead be training other states to follow Nebraska and Maine — the only two states in the nation that give all voters a voice and a fair shot,” Kleeb said. 

Civic Nebraska, a voting rights advocacy group, called both ballot initiatives “reckless, unnecessary, and fundamentally un-Nebraskan.”

“We are confident that Nebraskans will see these proposals for what they are: partisan schemes that would make our elections less secure, less fair and less reflective of the people,” said Steve Smith, a spokesperson for Civic Nebraska.

The proposed constitutional amendment for paper ballots and hand counting would ban many voting machines from being used. Voting machines that produce voter-verifiable paper records like Nebraska’s would be exempt. It would require all elections to be done by paper ballot by July 2027. 

The effort echoes the push by Trump and some Republicans over election integrity since the 2020 presidential election — an election former President Joe Biden won over Trump. Trump announced plans to “lead a movement” to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of next year’s midterm elections. 

Trump and his allies have sued multiple states alleging election fraud in 2020; all but one of the cases have not survived judicial scrutiny. 

“This petition simply codifies the most secure and publicly verifiable method of counting votes by prioritizing the manual counting of every ballot,”  Penner said. “We are setting a strong precedent that can be a trend setter for other states looking to restore public confidence in their election system.” 

Most voting experts agree that hand counting is less reliable, costlier and more time-consuming than counting by machine. The Texas Tribune and VoteBeat reported that a hand count of ballots in a rural central Texas county during the 2024 Republican primary took nearly 24 hours with 200 people involved. The hand-counting process cost taxpayers about twice the wages paid for the 2020 Republican primary and required fixing several errors. 

 Charles Herbster, who is flirting with another GOP bid for governor, criticized Pillen’s effort, saying that the change should have happened before the 2024 presidential election. He backs both ballot measures. 

“Governor Pillen and his team led people to believe he would get it done. They failed. Now, it’s up to the people,” Herbster said. 

Herbster lost to Pillen and then-State Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha in a three-way Republican primary in 2022 and is a major Trump donor.

Local political observers are mixed on whether a winner-take-all ballot initiative would pass. Some rural Republicans have shared concerns about one day losing “their voice” under winner-take-all as the state becomes more urban and suburban.

Underwood said it’s unlikely there would ever be enough urban and suburban votes to overtake Nebraska’s more conservative rural voters. 

“We have and are fully prepared to have those discussions with our colleagues in the Republican Party who have questions or concerns about it,” Underwood said. 

The group would need to gather the signatures of 10 percent of the state’s registered voters for the winner-take-all initiative that would change the state constitution. The hand-counting ballot initiative would need 7 percent of the state’s registered voters, since that one is changing state law. Both have until July to get on the November 2026 ballot. Over the past decade, gathering signatures and campaigning for a successful petition effort in Nebraska has typically cost $1.5 million or more. 

“Now that all five of the petitions have been introduced, we are ready to mobilize,” Danna Seevers, a co-sponsor of the two ballot initiatives and Seward County GOP chair, said. “Let’s take to the streets to complete the mission to shape Nebraska’s future.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that the proposal from State Sen. Myron Dorn never reached the legislative floor. 

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