LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska voters set a turnout record in the 2020 general election, with nearly 74% of eligible voters casting a ballot, the state's top election official said Wednesday.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen said voters beat the previous record from the 2016 general election by about 68,000 votes. Election officials statewide counted an official total of 936,106.
Evnen said 34 counties had a turnout of more than 80%, and four counties had a turnout of 88%. He said the record will likely increase once counties process an additional 20,000 to 25,000 ballots and provisional ballots that were submitted on Tuesday.
Early in-person and mail-in voting accounted for 436,269 of the total ballots cast, which was more than 90% of the total ballots requested. Evnen said 51,932 people voted early at their county election commissioner's office.
Evnen, a conservative Republican, said he would like to see more scrutiny placed on early balloting in the future. Any change in state law would have to go through Nebraska lawmakers, who have typically erred on the side of either expanding voting access or preserving the status quo.
Evnen argued that more than 25,000 ballots sent to voters at their request were never returned.
"What happened to those ballots? We don't know," he said. "Twenty-five thousand ballots is not an insignificant number."
Nebraska has 1,267,366 registered voters.