Of the millions of signatures collected since Nebraska adopted a petition initiative process in 1898, hundreds of thousands have been thrown out for various reasons.

Some rule technicalities would themselves be thrown out under a bill proposed Thursday in the state Legislature.

For instance, if a Nebraskan who signs a petition has moved since registering to vote, state law says that signature should be struck from the initiative.

But in 1999, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the law regulating how petition signatures are validated is unconstitutional.

Judges said rejecting signatures for minor technical reasons hampers the ability of the public to engage in the initiative process.

“If the secretary of state is trying to make is easier for people to be involved in the petition process, that would be a good thing,” said Mike Groene, a North Platte businessman who sponsored a petition drive to cap state spending last year.

Lawmakers “bemoan the fact that only 50 percent of the people vote, then they try to restrict the process,” Groene said.

Under current law, a signature is presumed valid only if all the records match exactly.

The bill (LB311) removes the language that an exact match is required.

If changed, the state law would be vague. But the attorney general has written standards that would be conveyed to counties, which would keep verification practices uniform, said Sen. Ray Aguilar, who introduced the bill at the secretary of state’s request.

“I think everyone’s pretty much in line,” the Grand Island senator said.

Messages left for officials in the secretary of state’s office Thursday by The Associated Press weren’t immediately returned.

The Legislature considered a similar bill in 2001, but did not vote on it before the session ended.

A tumultuous initiative season last year heightened interest in the issue. A petition touted by Nebraskans for Humane Care fell short of the roughly 114,000 signatures needed to be placed on the ballot, and the group claimed that many signatures were wrongfully rejected.

The group ended up with 109,000 valid signatures. The proposed constitutional amendment needed about 114,000.

Groene’s group, Stop Over Spending Nebraska, gathered about 160,000 signatures, he said, and nearly 40,000 were thrown out. The initiative went on the Nov. 7 ballot, but was rejected by voters.

“We thought that was an awful high number of rejections,” Groene said.

Groene said he is looking for a senator to introduce legislation to reduce the number of signatures needed to get an initiative on the ballot.

A group wanting to amend the state constitution must gather signatures from 10 percent of the state’s registered voters — in November elections, that meant about 114,000 signatures.

Groene and others want that changed to 10 percent of those who voted in the last governor’s race. That was the threshold before a 1994 ruling by the state Supreme Court, and would doubtless be a lower number.

“That would solve a lot problems,” Groene said.

A group wanting to create only a state law needs about 80,000 signatures — 7 percent of the state’s registered voters.

A resolution (LR8CA) introduced by Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln would decrease that to four percent of registered voters, but would increase the percentage needed for a proposed constitutional amendment to 15 percent.

“What I’m aiming to do here is to make it harder for outside money to come into the state and amend our constitution,” Avery said.

A constitutional amendment is much harder to overturn, and local grass-roots groups usually concentrate their efforts on changing state law, Avery said.