32-814. General election ballot; arrangement of names.

(1) The election commissioner or county clerk shall place the names of all nonpartisan candidates upon the same official general election ballot as the partisan candidates. The names placed on the official and sample general election ballots shall be the names of candidates nominated in the primary election, the names of petition candidates if any, the names of automatically nominated candidates as provided in section 32-811, and the names of candidates filing as provided in subsection (2) of section 32-606. The names of the candidates shall be placed under the proper titles.

(2) The election commissioner or county clerk shall place on the official general election ballot in each office division no more than twice as many names as there are places to be filled at the general election unless more than one candidate has successfully petitioned on the ballot to fill a vacancy after the primary election. The names of the nonpartisan candidates who received the highest number of votes for the office for which they were candidates in the primary election shall be placed on the official ballot. If more than one person was a candidate for the same position in the primary election, the election commissioner or county clerk shall place on the official ballot the names of the two persons who received the highest number of votes in the primary election for the position for which they were candidates.

(3) When the name of a person is written in and voted for as a candidate for an office for which he or she did not file in the primary election, such person shall not be entitled to a certificate of nomination at the primary election and shall not have his or her name placed on the general election ballot unless he or she (a) receives at least five percent of the total vote cast for Governor or for President of the United States at the immediately preceding general election in the political subdivision from which nominees for such position are to be chosen, (b) is one of the candidates receiving the number of votes qualifying him or her for nomination, and (c) meets the requirements for the office.

(4) If there are more candidates than vacancies for the same office, the election commissioner or county clerk shall rotate the names of the nonpartisan candidates on the official general election ballot. The election commissioner or county clerk shall follow the order of precincts or wards as set out in the official abstract book on file in his or her office in preparing the official ballots. The first set of ballots for the first precinct or ward shall be the names of candidates filing by date and hour or of those candidates filing petitions, and for local candidates the names of candidates shall be listed in the order of filing by date and hour with the election commissioner or county clerk or of those candidates filing petitions. Thereafter the names shall be rotated precinct by precinct in each office division in the order in which the precincts are set out in the official abstract book. In making the change of position, the printer shall take the line of type at the head of each division and place it at the bottom of that division, shoving up the column so that the name that was second shall be first after the change.

Source

Annotations

Provision for eliminating all but one candidate does not apply to petition candidates on nonpolitical county ticket. State ex rel. King v. Hanson, 138 Neb. 644, 294 N.W. 453 (1940).

A write-in candidate, who receives the requisite number of votes cast by a political party at a primary election, is the nominee of that party. State ex rel. Driscoll v. Swanson, 127 Neb. 715, 256 N.W. 872 (1934).

Before a person can be the nominee of any political party, such person must receive the requisite number of votes cast by that party at the primary election. State ex rel. Dickinson v. Sheldon, 80 Neb. 4, 113 N.W. 802 (1907).