Nebraska secretary of state on how new executive order could impact elections

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed his second executive order on election integrity. Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen said the executive order will not have an impact on the May 12 primary. Evnen said the executive order accomplishes two things. The first expands on the SAVE program, the federal citizenship database.”The executive order yesterday creates impetus for the Department of Homeland Security to prepare databases that they will send to the states, so instead of requesting the data be considered, it instead of us sending data to them, they will be sending data to us,” Evnen said. “And that data will be a list of Nebraska residents who are age 18 or older and who are U.S. citizens. So they’re going to be preparing that state by state. That’s one of the things that the executive order does.”Evnen said Nebraska already utilizes the SAVE database, so the lists established under this order will serve as a second check.”We’ve begun to utilize the SAVE databases for the 2 or 3% of Nebraska registered voters where we don’t have citizenship status confirmed,” Evnen said. “We know that 97 or 98% of registered voters in Nebraska are citizens of the United States. We know that because we have data through the DMV, and the DMV checks citizenship.”Who votes by mail? The data on how Americans cast ballots as Trump targets systemThe second thing this executive order does is standardize mailing for early ballots. “It’s standardizes envelopes. It standardizes coding. It requires the Postal Service to prepare a set of regulations, really, to expedite these and to also keep track of them,” Evnen said. “States will be required to send to the postal service a list of early voters, a list of people who have signed up to be early voters, and where early voter ballots will be mailed out. These are controls at the Postal Service level to assure the integrity of early voting.”The order also proposes unique barcodes be added to ballot envelopes. “Before the ballots are counted. The envelopes. Once that envelope is confirmed as being legitimate, then the ballot is removed from the envelope, and it’s put in a file with all the other ballots, and the envelopes are separated and kept separately from it,” Evnen said. “So we don’t know how each person cast their ballot, because the identifiers on the envelope and not on the ballot itself.”Evnen said he would never agree with putting the barcodes on the ballots themselves.”I am completely opposed to putting barcodes on ballots that can identify that ballot with you. Because we have a secret ballot. No one is entitled to know how you filled it out,” Evnen said. “If we have a unique identifier barcode, then it can be traced back to you. And I’m opposed to that. I won’t do that.”Evnen said it’s unclear how much of this executive order will be in effect by November, but he says they’ll know more as things start to be processed. The order is focused on election integrity. Evnen said Nebraska’s elections are safe and accurate. “The elections in Nebraska are secure, and they’re accurate, and we work very hard to assure that it’s not an accident. We work hard to assure that across the state,” Evnen said. “Nebraska is the gold standard for elections.”Make sure you can always see the latest news, weather, sports and more from KETV NewsWatch 7 on Google search.NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Local News | National | Sports | Newscasts on demand |