These days, you need to overcome a legal 'full-court press' to get citizen-led initiatives on the statewide ballot

Back in the day, our high school basketball team used to employ a full-court press when we'd fallen behind.

It was mostly a desperation measure toward the end of a game, a frantic effort in hopes that we could suddenly trip up our opponent and turn a defeat into a victory. 

Well, just recently in Nebraska, we were able to see a political full-court press in action, and such all-out strategy seems to have become the norm when it comes to citizen-led ballot initiatives.

Ballot initiatives allow the "second house" of Nebraska state government – voting citizens – to adopt proposed state laws or constitutional amendments.

We're the only state in the nation with a one-house Unicameral legislature – the "first house" – so citizens, via the ballot box, become the "second house" to decide state policy.

Some important laws have been passed at the ballot box, including the 2022 decisions to raise the state's minimum wage and require a photo ID to vote – both things that the "first house," the Unicameral, declined to pass.

This year, we have a ballot initiative-palooza as six measures qualified for the ballot via petition drives.

But whoa, wait a minute, it doesn't appear good enough, anymore, for groups to spend millions of dollars and months of work to gather more than a 100,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify for the ballot. No, nowadays we have to have a court decide if the language complies with state law.

Groups opposing ballot initiatives employ this political full-court press after they see public support for a political campaign that has gathered enough signatures. If they can't win at the ballot box, maybe they can win in court.

We saw this play out on two successive days recently when the Nebraska Supreme Court took oral arguments on efforts to disqualify two initiatives on abortion and another on private school vouchers. 

(Don't forget – That school voucher challenge came after the State legislature, in an unprecedented full-court press maneuver, voted this spring to rescind a voucher law passed a year ago, thus rendering null and void a successful petition drive that was going to force a public vote on that 2023 "Opportunity Scholarship" law. So opponents of using public funds for private education mounted a second, successful initiative petition drive.)

Thankfully, justice prevailed with the Supreme Court, which ruled just a couple of days after hearing arguments that the abortion and school voucher matters should be placed on the November ballot.

"We have repeatedly said that the right of initiative is precious to the people and one which the courts are zealous to preserve to the fullest tenable measure of spirit as well as letter," wrote Supreme Court Judge Lindsey Miller-Lerman. Whew.

The court, in a concurring opinion written by Chief Justice Mike Heavican and Miller-Lerman, also shut the door on any reconsideration by Secretary of State Bob Evnen to reverse his decision to approve the language of the school voucher petition. The judges wrote that they saw no legal way to do that (Evnen, after approving the language, had expressed a desire to reverse course, though in the end, followed the court's opinion).

The full-court pressing is far from over. 

Opponents of legalizing medical cannabis to treat maladies like uncontrollable seizures and post-traumatic stress disorder filed a last-minute legal challenge. It's too late to remove the marijuana issue from the ballot this year – remember, a technicality knocked it off the ballot in 2020 – but if the legal challenge is successful, it would block counting the votes cast in November.

There's also a possibility that legal challenges could be filed if the school voucher referendum is successful. 

This, sadly, is the way of the world now. Decisions are appealed, even on the football field, and it takes 33 votes to pass a bill in the State legislature that has any kind of controversy, rather than a simple majority of the 49 senators.

But it seems particularly sad that a right given citizens in the State Constitution – to adopt laws or change the constitution – now has so many more hurdles to jump.

Paul Hammel has covered the Nebraska state government and the state for decades. He retired in April as senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha Sun.  A native of Ralston, he loves traveling and writing about the state.