Tax Relief Nebraska said it believes it has enough valid signatures to put two petitions on Nebraska’s Nov. 3 ballot, to legalize online sports betting in the state. The group said it submitted more than 201,000 signatures for a constitutional amendment and about 146,000 for a companion statute, figures it said were comfortably above the roughly 126,000 and 88,000 signatures needed for the two measures.
The proposal would do two things. One petition would amend the state constitution to legalize online sports betting, while the other would create a tax framework for the revenue. According to Nebraska Public Media, 70% of online wagering taxes would go to the property tax relief fund, and some of the money would be allocated to the county where a bet was placed, a system that could touch all 93 counties.
The campaign comes after online betting had been debated in the Legislature since last year, with two bills carrying over into the current legislative season. One resolution, Legislative Resolution 20CA, took well over half a year to gain enough traction to reach a ballot path.
Supporters say the state is already losing business to its neighbours. Testimony before the Legislature from a geofencing company showed that Nebraskans crossed the border roughly 40,000 times in a year to place mobile sports bets in states where it is legal, mostly Iowa.
Opponents have cast the drive as a gambling-harm issue. Pat Loontjer of Gambling with the Good Life said legal online betting would damage college sports and strain personal finances, especially for young men and college students saving for the future. Mike Sciandra of the Nebraska Council on Problem Gambling said he was officially neutral on the proposal but stressed the need for safeguards, adding that mobile sports betting has been shown in other states to be about three to four times more addictive than traditional casino gambling.
Nebraska Family Alliance’s Nate Grasz was more blunt. He called the tax-relief framing a sham and said the measure was really a major expansion of online gambling financed by out-of-state companies. He also said the expected property tax relief, estimated by the group at $61 million over five years, was small beside a $25 billion five-year property tax burden statewide.
The campaign has drawn heavy industry backing. Nebraska Public Media reported that DraftKings and FanDuel each donated about $3.5 million, more than $7 million combined. WarHorse Casinos publicly supported the petitions, said it was lining up a partnership with DraftKings and FanDuel, and argued that paid petition circulators were necessary to run a serious ballot drive.
The effort has also been shadowed by fraud allegations. Lancaster County election commissioner Todd Wiltgen flagged more than 13,000 petitions as potentially fraudulent, with 68% marked for a suspected fraudulent signature and more than 20% marked on suspicion that the signer was not a registered Nebraska voter. The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office opened an investigation and six people were arrested, but Jordan McGrain, the campaign’s managing director, said he remained very confident enough valid signatures had been submitted and that any fraudulent circulators should be identified and prosecuted. The Secretary of State’s office is due to certify the ballot in mid-September, when it will become clear whether voters will get the chance to decide.
