It won’t be official until the Secretary of State’s office confirms the signatures over the next 40 days, but it seems death penalty reinstatement will be on the November 2016 ballot. We are confident that the more people learn about the death penalty the less likely they are to support it. Please stick with us through 2016 as we continue to spread the word about the realities of the death penalty.
A statement from NADP:
Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NADP) is closely monitoring the initial results of the death penalty referendum signature gathering campaign, and will await the official decision from the Secretary of State’s office. However, today proponents of the death penalty are claiming to have enough signatures to suspend the legislature’s bi-partisan repeal of capital punishment in advance of the 2016 general election.
“In spite of apparently qualifying, the number of signatures appears to be underwhelming given the expectations created by those who would like to keep this broken and wasteful system that we can’t use and don’t need,” said Rev. Stephen Griffith, incoming Executive Director of NADP. “Just like the legislators they elected, we believe the more Nebraskans learn about the failures of capital punishment, the more they will be inclined to get rid of it.”
Although the death penalty referendum appears to have obtained signatures from 10 percent of registered voters, it failed to attract broad-based financial support, with governor Ricketts, his father, and a handful of their associates providing the bulk of funds.
“It is evident that grassroots Nebraskans have already rejected the death penalty with their pocketbooks,” Griffith said.
During the next 14 months, NADP and their project, Nebraska Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty (CCATDP), will continue doing what it has done for three decades: having conversations with Nebraskans across the political spectrum about why capital punishment has failed our state.
Matt Maly, Coordinator for Nebraska CCATDP, said, “As Nebraskans keep learning about the risk of executing innocents, the prolonged anguish for victims’ families, and the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars, we’re confident they’ll keep turning against the death penalty.”
The undeniable and unfixable problems with capital punishment caused the Nebraska Legislature to vote overwhelmingly three times to repeal the death penalty and then override the governor’s veto.
Maly said, “Once our state’s Second House learns all of the facts, we are confident they
too will reject our broken death penalty.”