The Nebraska Abortion Ballot Measure War Just Got Exponentially More Confusing

In July, the Nebraska secretary of state’s office confirmed that hundreds of voters had submitted affidavits to try to withdraw their signatures from an anti-abortion ballot measure petition after anti-abortion groups tricked them into signing by claiming they were pro-choice. Now, the fight for abortion rights in Nebraska has somehow devolved further into chaos. 

On Friday, Secretary of State Bob Evnen's office certified two competing abortion ballot measures—it's "the first time" dueling ballot measures have competed "in Nebraska’s history," Evnen told NBC. The abortion rights amendment, called "The Protect the Right to Abortion," would enshrine a right to abortion in the state Constitution, and the anti-abortion amendment, called the "Protect Women and Children," would enshrine the state's already active 12-week ban, which would make it all the more difficult to repeal. The Protect Women and Children campaign says their amendment would include an exception for rape, incest, or when the pregnant person's life is at risk, but time and again, we've seen how exceptions don't work, rendering doctors too afraid to provide care under almost any circumstance.

All of this is further complicated by the state's requirements for a ballot measure to pass. An initiative must receive both a majority of the vote and at least 35% of the total votes cast in the election. If both, competing measures meet this threshold, the one with the most votes will win, per NBC. The abortion rights initiative already faced an uphill battle in the red state—now, thanks to the anti-abortion initiative, even if it’s successful at winning a majority and 35% of the vote, it could still fail.

In a statement shared with Jezebel, the Protect Our Rights campaign celebrated the initiative's certification on the ballot. But the campaign stressed that this important victory comes “despite competing petition drives by conservative politicians that were rampant with deceptive tactics and misinformation.”

Nebraska is now the 10th state to certify an abortion rights ballot measure for November. But across the country, since abortion rights are broadly popular, even in deep-red states, the anti-abortion movement has used confusion and misinformation to try and keep these measures off the ballot. In 2023, Ohio Republicans purged thousands of voters from voter rolls in the weeks leading up to the election. In South Dakota, anti-abortion activists have posed as government officials to try to get ballot signatories to retract their signatures. In Kansas in 2022, and, again, in Nebraska this election cycle, anti-abortion groups rolled out a mass disinformation campaign framing anti-abortion ballot initiatives as “pro-women.”

Anti-abortion officials are installing “all the roadblocks they can” with legal complexity and so “regular people who are working two jobs, not paying attention to their legislative session every day, don't even get the opportunity to vote on abortion," Fairness Project's Kelly Hall told Jezebel during last week's Democratic National Convention.

In Nebraska, both abortion ballot measures submitted close to double the 136,000 valid signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. In July, voters and abortion rights activists raised that the anti-abortion Protect Women & Children campaign has been lying to voters and saying that their ballot measure is “pro-choice” to get people to sign. The Nebraska Examiner reported last month that the secretary of state’s office received at least 348 signed affidavits requesting the removal of signatures from abortion-related measures; just 12 of the affidavits concerned the abortion rights measure, while the rest concerned the anti-abortion initiative.

One voter who sent an affidavit to the secretary of state’s office told the Associated Press she’d signed Protect Women & Children’s petition after a volunteer told her theirs was a “pro-choice” petition. When she learned what she’d actually signed, she asked for her signature to be removed, but says the anti-abortion volunteer told her, “‘Well then just vote no later.’” State Sen. Megan Hunt of Omaha, a vocal advocate for abortion rights working with the Protect Our Rights campaign, told the Examiner last month that she’s heard extensively from voters who have been approached and misled by Protect Women & Children. Hunt said one voter told her that the Protect Women & Children campaign lied to her that she could sign the petition for her entire family, which is against Nebraska law. Back in May, Protect Our Rights obtained audio of a Protect Women & Children organizer attempting to mislead a voter and avoid disclosing that their proposed ballot measure would ban abortion. “It’s a petition to allow a woman to have an abortion when it comes to rape, incest or the health of the woman,” the anti-abortion organizer says in the clip, which was shared with Jezebel.

"Nebraskans should be clear: anti-abortion activists and politicians are committed to a total abortion ban in the state," Protect Our Rights campaign manager Allie Berry said. "Then they launched and bankrolled a deceptively named petition drive to get on the November ballot and trick voters into giving them the power to ban abortion permanently."