GRAND ISLAND — A Nebraska man allegedly falsified dozens of signatures earlier this year as he worked as a paid circulator for a group seeking to legalize medical marijuana in the state through a pair of ballot initiatives, according to court documents.
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Michael Egbert, a Grand Island man who began collecting signatures for the petition drive in the Hall County city in January, turned in petition pages that included the supposed signatures of eight deceased people, Deputy Hall County Sheriff Donovan Fowler wrote Thursday in a warrant for Egbert’s arrest.
Egbert, who told police he turned in “well over 100 pages of petitions” as part of the campaign’s apparently successful effort to crack Nebraska’s general election ballot, is also accused of turning in purported signatures that included six misspellings and 68 inaccurate birthdays, Fowler wrote in the warrant.
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Reached by phone Friday morning, Egbert’s attorney, Robert Alexander, declined to comment, citing the pending charges against his client.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen had signaled late last month that the pair of petitions circulated by the medical marijuana group had garnered enough signatures to reach November’s ballot, but he withheld the official certification until Friday, the last possible day Evnen could certify the ballot measure under state law.
KENNETH FERRIERA, Lincoln Journal Star file photo
According to a joint news release from the AG’s office and Hall County Attorney Marty Klein, investigation began after Hall County Election Commissioner Tracy Overstreet flagged 17 of the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Regulation petitions as having potentially fraudulent signatures. In addition, Overstreet identified 21 pages of the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Patient Protection petition received by Hall County as having potentially fraudulent signatures. All of the pages with suspected fraudulent signatures were traced back to one petition circulator, Michael Egbert of Grand Island.
“Signature irregularities were found by the Hall County Election Office, and an investigation ensued,” Klein said in the release.
“Petition circulators and voters alike should know and understand that this office — and all election offices across Nebraska — take elections and signature verification very seriously,” Overstreet said in the release. “We go through each petition line by line by line, signature by signature – just like we do for signatures on early voting ballot envelopes.”
The charges against Egbert — which Attorney General Mike Hilgers announced at a news conference Friday, the day that state law requires Nebraska’s general election ballot to be certified — come as the state’s top election official, after days of hesitation, officially certified Friday that the ballot measures championed by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana will appear on November’s ballot.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen had signaled late last month that the pair of petitions circulated by the group had garnered enough signatures to reach November’s ballot, but he withheld the official certification until Friday, the last possible day Evnen could certify the ballot measure under state law.
At Friday’s news conference, Hilgers said he kept Evnen apprised of the progress of the investigation — which began in early August, according to court documents — and warned that several thousand signatures may have been impacted by Egbert’s alleged forgery.
It’s unclear what Friday’s charges mean for the fate of the effort to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska, which already faces a last-minute legal challenge from a former state lawmaker who filed a lawsuit late Thursday to stop the certification of two petitions that would put the matter before voters this November.
“}]] The man began collecting signatures for the petition drive in Grand Island in January. Read More