Senator Janssen and Schilz are still pushing their voter suppression bill, LB 239. The bill not only will decrease the vote, it will cost taxpayers and local counties hundreds of thousands of dollars for a problem that doesn't even exist in our state. 

Senator Schilz has prioritized the voter ID bill which means it could come up for floor debate as early as Monday. You might also have seen Senator Janssen's misleading Facebook ads pushing his bill. It's time for us to make sure our state senators hear from us loud and clear that we need them to defend our right to vote. 

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an organization funded by some of our nation’s largest corporations, with names like General Motors, Bank of America, Exxon, and Pfizer appearing on their list of major donors. ALEC is committed to providing corporate America with direct access to state legislators, while drafting and promoting legislation that primarily favors the interests of the corporate funders.  

Common Cause Nebraska has been monitoring ALEC activity in our state for more than 15 years. ALEC’s national organization has been very secretive about its state legislative memberships. It often takes a public records request to identify state members, since ALEC records are often kept on state computers. 

If years of watching election returns with my Reagan-Republican dad taught me nothing else, it’s that voting is the most sacred part of our democracy. I remember haranguing my parents every presidential election, even at the tender age of seven, asking if they’d gone to the polls. I couldn’t vote, so bygod, I made sure the adults in my life did.

Voting is the ultimate fulfillment of the promise in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” I’ll never have the money to compete with Big Oil money in Congress or run endless ads that lie about how many jobs a pipeline will create, but my vote counts the same as Mitt Romney’s, Barack Obama’s, my Tea Party neighbor’s, my doctor’s and my dad’s. Poor, rich, pretty, ugly, conservative, liberal, working or unemployed--we each get one vote.

The simplest way to keep our elected officials accountable is with our votes. Voting is a fundamental right, and Nebraska's always protected and respected it. Unfortunately, State Senator Charlie Janssen thinks it's better to block the vote than rock the vote.

Candidates say the darndest things: