The Lancaster County Election Commission has completed its review of petition signatures for a proposed Lincoln City Council term limits charter amendment. Lancaster County Election Commissioner Todd Wiltgen tells KLIN News the office processed 486 of the 602 petition pages submitted by Good Government Lincoln.
Of the 8,082 petition lines reviewed, 5,628 signatures were accepted as valid, which is about 70 percent. Because the petition reached the required signature threshold before all pages needed to be reviewed, the remaining pages were not processed.
Wiltgen says the Election Commission certified the verified petition and returned it to the Lincoln City Clerk’s Office. The term limits petition is the first of three charter amendment petitions submitted by Good Government Lincoln that the Election Commission is reviewing. The other two involve changing election dates and the city’s three-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Wiltgen says the remaining two petitions will continue to be reviewed. “If everything goes as smoothly as the first, hopefully the second and third petitions will be certified later this week, early next week.”
Wiltgen says the verification process can take longer when there are higher numbers of questionable signatures, including duplicates, signatures from people outside the jurisdiction or people who are not registered voters.
He says the first petition did not present significant problems involving fraudulent signatures.