LINCOLN — Late last month at the Lancaster County Election Commission, Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen observed logic and accuracy testing for ballot-counting machines as part of his “transparency tour” across multiple counties in the state.
Evnen, standing behind half-height voting booths, said every single ballot tabulator in the state is tested three times a month before every election — and that the state will conduct a typical hand-counted audit after the primary election, selecting random precincts to spot check.
He called Nebraska elections the “gold standard,” pointing to a new state law that allows political party members, including from opposing parties, to observe the accuracy test.
“We take a lot of steps in the Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s Office to assure the security of our elections, and we are dedicated to that,” Evnen said.
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Part of the reason for Evnen’s more public focus on transparency: His GOP primary opponent in 2026, Omaha businessman Scott Petersen, has criticized the secretary of state for not doing enough to secure the state’s elections, pointing to technology the state uses in its elections and saying that the technology could be tampered with.
Petersen has emphasized questions of whether ballot-counting machines the state uses can access the internet and be hacked. Lancaster County Election officials said the machines cannot access the internet and said the office’s computer used to upload election results is connected only when it is time to upload the data via a flash drive.
Petersen also argues that voting by mail should be restricted, used only military personnel, people with disabilities and people who live far from their polling site, he told the Omaha World-Herald.
He said he would conduct full hand counts of entire races, particularly in close races, according to his campaign website. Most voting experts have found hand counting less reliable, costlier and more time-consuming than counting by machine. The Texas Tribune and VoteBeat reported that a hand count of ballots in a rural central Texas county during the 2024 Republican primary took nearly 24 hours and involved 200 people.
On Tuesday, Republican primary voters will decide whether to give Evnen another opportunity or to go another way with Petersen.
“People don’t trust election systems … and whether right or wrong, it’s a problem,” Petersen previously told the Examiner. “It needs to be addressed.”
Evnen, like other election officials in conservative-led states, has faced a push from some populist parts of the GOP for additional election security measures promoted by President Donald Trump since his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden. Theirs is a national framing questioning the electoral process that many election experts warn has undermined public trust.
This is not the first time Evnen has tried fending off a GOP challenger. He survived two in 2022, both of whom claimed widespread voter fraud had cost Trump the 2020 election. The challengers collected more than half of the votes cast in that race — a combined 125,778 votes to Evnen’s 98,263.
When asked about why some people in the GOP seem to think he has not done enough for election security, Evnen said, “You would have to ask them.”
Petersen, who has ties to the new-look Nebraska Republican Party that helped overthrow a team aligned with then-Gov. Pete Ricketts, now a U.S. senator, has secured the endorsements of 18 county Republican parties. Evnen has a lengthy list of endorsements from Republican elected officials in the state, including from Nebraska U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts and U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith from the state’s largely rural 3rd Congressional District.
Some grassroots conservatives are split over the race: Nebraskans Against Government Overreach, NAGO, endorsed Evnen over Petersen, while the Nebraska Freedom Coalition supports Petersen.
NAGO had issues with Petersen’s handling of a party election at a NEGOP State Central Committee meeting in January. The state party issued a statement last month saying the committee followed the “proper process” for picking who would fill a vacant seat on the party’s executive committee to represent the 2nd Congressional District.
The secretary of state’s race has been heated, with Petersen attacking Evnen and his job performance on social media and Omaha-based 2nd Congressional District U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., criticizing Petersen and vocally backing Evnen.
Bacon has called Petersen the “President of the TinFoil Hat Club” for his criticisms of election integrity in a state like Nebraska, where Bacon says elections are run well.
Bacon also posted about two Petersen supporters who posted comments about Jews and Israel that the congressman called antisemitic. Petersen told the CBS affiliate in Omaha, KMTV, that he would never post comments like that and described the Bacon attack as “dirty politics” by a “desperate Evnen campaign.”
Petersen told the Examiner in March that he hadn’t spoken to Bacon in a few years. Petersen previously worked for Bacon and helped Bacon’s most recent GOP primary challenger in 2022, Dan Frei, whom Bacon soundly beat.
Petersen has said he’s happy for the attention from the retiring congressman and thinks it boosted his campaign.
Evnen has spent much of the past year balancing efforts to defend the state’s elections that his office administers while also responding to concerns from some of his fellow Republicans and the Trump administration over election integrity.
The state’s top election official has faced criticism from Democrats and some Republicans for handing over the state’s voter data to the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also faced lawsuits for some of his decisions about voting, including his late push against legislative protections for the voting rights of people who have finished serving felony criminal sentences. He lost a lawsuit on that topic.
Evnen told Omaha’s KMTV that he committed to running a positive campaign.
The GOP primary winner faces the winner of the Democratic primary between school nutrition director Sarah Slattery and Lee Cimfel, who describes himself as a freelancer.
Nebraska’s primary election is Tuesday.
This story is provided by States Newsroom, a nonprofit state news network and Blox Digital content partner.
