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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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, Journal Star file photo
Michael Egbert, a Grand Island man who began collecting signatures for the petition drive in the Hall County city in February, 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.
Reached by phone Friday morning, Egbert’s attorney, Robert Alexander, declined to comment, citing the pending charges against his client.
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The charges against Egbert were announced by Attorney General Mike Hilgers at a news conference Friday, the day that state law requires Nebraska’s general election ballot to be certified.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen ultimately certified the petitions Friday after tossing the signatures that election workers couldn’t verify, he said in a statement. But the state’s top election official left the door open for the effort’s eventual removal from the ballot should investigators uncover widespread fraud.
“I am certifying the petitions because, at this point, they appear to have met the threshold signature requirements,” Evnen said. “That could change in light of the Attorney General’s investigation. Both cannabis petitions will appear on the ballot, but a court could order later that the initiatives be thrown out.”
Each of the two petitions exceeded a number of signatures equal to 7% of registered voters statewide while also getting the names of 5% of voters in 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.
The petitions qualified in 52 counties, according to Evnen’s office, comfortably meeting the requirements to qualify for the ballot regardless of the alleged fraud at play in Hall County.
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.
“The integrity of our elections is of critical statewide importance to Nebraskans,” Hilgers said. “These criminal charges are the result of a very collaborative, tightly coordinated work between a number of different agencies.”
Hall County Attorney Martin Klein said the irregularities in the petitions submitted by Egbert were discovered by Tracy Overstreet, the county’s election commissioner, and her staff during a “diligent, meticulous, thorough” review of the signatures.
“It was during that process that Ms. Overstreet found a number of irregularities that gave her concern,” Klein said in the Zoom press conference.
Irregularities were found on 21 pages submitted by Egbert for the first of the two petitions run by Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, which would legalize cannabis for medical use, Klein said.
A total of 124 names were found to be fraudulently added to the first measure, the county attorney said.
On the second petition, which creates a regulatory scheme for medical marijuana in Nebraska, there were 17 pages with irregularities totaling 98 fraudulent names.
Egbert allegedly used a phone book to find the names and addresses of individuals in the Grand Island area, forging their signatures on the petitions and making up birthdates to keep up with a per-hour quota he was expected to meet as a paid circulator, according to court documents.
Evnen said Friday afternoon at a press conference in the Rotunda that the signatures found to be falsified were “no doubt” not counted toward the total to qualify the petitions.
He added that should the signatures collected by Egbert be removed from the total collected for Hall County or the state, it would not be enough to disqualify the petitions.
If convicted of the class IV felony, Egbert could face a possible penalty of two years in prison, a $10,000 fine or both.
Hilgers said the investigation into the irregularities on the medical marijuana petitions will continue, adding he was unaware of any other potential fraud on other petitions circulated this year.
“I think Nebraskans should feel confident that we are on the lookout for voter fraud or anyone who might interfere with our elections,” he said. “We will investigate those actions, we’ll do it promptly, and we will take action.”
In a statement Friday, Crista Eggers, campaign manager for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, said in a statement the organization provides “extensive training to all” of its petition circulators.
“Circulators are held to an extremely high standard and are required to strictly follow all legal requirements for collecting signatures,” the statement said. “Any circulators caught violating the law should be held accountable for their actions.”
Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana thanked Hilgers and Klein “for looking into any petition irregularities and working to protect campaigns and the integrity of the initiative process.”
The charges against Egbert came one day after a former state lawmaker filed a lawsuit to stop the certification of the two petitions that would put the matter before voters this November.
An expedited hearing in that lawsuit was briefly scheduled for Friday afternoon but was canceled before it happened.
Evnen certified the ballot just before 2 p.m. Friday, ensuring the proposals to legalize and regulate medical cannabis in Nebraska will go before voters in November — even as the Hall County investigation and Lancaster County civil suit hang over the effort, which has long faced obstacles in the state.
The secretary of state said his office is working closely with Hilgers to identify any other irregularities in the medical marijuana petitions, but did not say what those might be.
“You would have to ask the attorney general,” Evnen said.
This year marks the third straight election cycle Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana sought to get medical cannabis on the ballot.
In 2020, the group submitted more than 196,000 signatures to put the question to voters, but a legal challenge filed by Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner ended up getting it removed from the ballot before the election.
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“}]] A Grand Island man allegedly turned in petition pages that included the supposed signatures of eight deceased people, a Hall County Sheriff deputy wrote in an arrest warrant. Read More