The whole case, in two numbers
To throw out the medical cannabis petitions, the challengers had to knock out a specific number of signatures. The district court counted exactly how many they actually proved. Here is the gap:
| Petition | Needed to disqualify | Proved | Short by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legalization (Initiative 437) | 3,464 | 711 | 2,753 |
| Regulatory (Initiative 438) | 3,358 | 826 | 2,532 |
In the district court's own words, Kuehn and the Secretary had "fallen short in this lawsuit" — and were "well short" of rebutting the presumption of validity. The Supreme Court affirmed.
That is the entire case. Everything below is where those numbers came from, who was involved, and what the court did and did not decide.
An earlier version of this page was headlined "Seven Justices, Zero Dissents" and cited only press coverage. Both halves of that headline were wrong.
It was not seven justices. The panel was six justices — Funke, C.J., with Cassel, Stacy, Papik, Freudenberg and Bergevin, JJ. — plus Schreiner, District Judge, sitting by designation. Seven votes, six justices. Every outlet we read said "seven justices."
And it was not silent. There were two separate concurrences, one of which reads as a warning to future petition campaigns. Unanimous in judgment is not the same as unanimous in reasoning. We got that wrong from press summaries and the opinion corrected us. That is the argument for primary sources, made at our own expense.
The timeline
Secretary of State Bob Evnen certifies both measures as legally sufficient for the ballot. The campaign had 6,822 more validated signatures than required. The same month, John Kuehn — a former state senator from Heartwell — files suit under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 32-1412(2) to enjoin Evnen from placing the measures on the ballot.
Kuehn names as defendants the measures' three sponsors: Anna Wishart, Crista Eggers, and Adam Morfeld.
On 2024-09-13 Evnen certified both petitions — and warned about them in the same news release. He announced certification while stating that an Attorney General's investigation had "uncovered serious questions about the signature gathering process for these petitions" and that "a court could order later that the initiatives be thrown out." He put them on the ballot and predicted their removal in one document.
Then the Secretary switches sides. Evnen files a cross-claim against the sponsors, challenging the legal sufficiency of the petitions he had just certified.
Phase one trial before Judge Susan I. Strong, Lancaster County District Court. Evidence of misconduct by circulators and notaries is presented.
The district court flags a standing problem with Evnen's position: he had already certified the petitions, and there did not appear to be any "process by which the Secretary can change his mind and 'rescind his legal sufficiency determination.'"
Voters pass both. Initiative 437 at 71%. Initiative 438 at 67%.
The State Canvassing Board unanimously certifies the results.
Oral argument before the Nebraska Supreme Court. From the bench, Chief Justice Funke tests what the challengers' theory would actually require:
Affirmed. Kuehn v. Evnen, 322 Neb. 161, No. S-24-901. Opinion by Funke, C.J.
Where the 711 and the 826 came from
This is the part no news story printed, and it is the most important table on this page. The court did not wave off the misconduct allegations — it counted them, person by person, and published the arithmetic.
| Who | Why signatures were struck | Legalization | Regulatory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Egbert | Circulator fraud | 487 | 541 |
| Garrett Connely | Improper notarization | 145 | 147 |
| Patricia Petersen | Improper notarization | 23 | 67 |
| Kimberly Bowling-Martin | Improper notarization | 1 | 34 |
| Crista Eggers | Improper notarization | 27 | 26 |
| Jacy Todd | Improper notarization | 14 | 1 |
| Shari Lawlor | Circulated and notarized the same petition | 11 | — |
| Marcie Reed | Improper notarization (no stamp) | — | 10 |
| Robin Vodehnal | Circulated petitions after they were notarized | 3 | — |
| TOTAL PROVED | 711 | 826 | |
| NEEDED | 3,464 | 3,358 | |
Two circulators and notaries were cleared outright. The court found the Secretary had not shown fraud by four other circulators, and rejected the allegations against notary Shannon Coryell entirely. It also rejected the Secretary's argument that "both initiatives should be thrown out" for widespread coordinated fraud even if valid signatures remained.
Both sides of the receipts
Allegation ≠ finding, and it runs in both directions. This section is where that rule gets expensive for the side we might otherwise be assumed to favor.
The campaign's own sponsor improperly notarized petitions
Crista Eggers is not only the campaign's executive director and a named sponsor of both measures. She is also one of the eight notaries whose work the court found defective.
The district court found she notarized petitions circulated by another person outside that person's presence, and struck 27 signatures on the Legalization Petition and 26 on the Regulatory Petition on that basis. The court expressly said it "did not excuse or justify" her improper notarization.
We are putting that in a table with her name on it, in the same size type as everyone else's. A page that lists Egbert's 487 and quietly omits Eggers' 27 is an argument, not a record.
What it does not mean: the court also found Kuehn and the Secretary had "not shown by a preponderance of the evidence" that any other petitions lost validity through her. The finding is 53 signatures across two petitions — not a scheme.
Justice Cassel's concurrence — the warning shot
Two justices wrote separately to say the majority's rule has a limit. This is the passage future petition campaigns should read twice:
He joined the majority only because "the notarial failure did not reach that level" here. That is not a clean bill of health. It is a road map for the next challenge.
Justice Stacy's concurrence — the procedural objection
Stacy, J., concurred in the judgment but questioned whether Nebraska's own precedent — Duggan v. Beermann (1994) and Duggan v. Beerman (1996) — was rightly decided in allowing a preelection sufficiency challenge to be joined with a declaratory judgment action, keeping the fight alive after the election. She suggested the court revisit it.
What was proven criminally
Separately from this civil case: a petition circulator in Grand Island pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, and a notary in York was convicted by a jury on misdemeanor charges and is appealing. Additional circulators and notaries were named by the challengers; no further charges were filed. Named-but-not-charged is a third thing, and this page will not collapse it into either of the other two.
What the losing side said
Attorney General Mike Hilgers said his office would follow the law as it stands, and called it a "sad day for election integrity in Nebraska." Secretary Evnen's office declined to comment — which is a decline, not a statement.
The homework — four items owed, four now paid
1. The signature-count conflict was not a conflict at all. One outlet said "about 1,500," another said "711." Both were right. The court struck 711 on the Legalization Petition and 826 on the Regulatory Petition — 711 alone, or 1,537 combined. They were counting different things, and neither said which. We refused to pick one yesterday. That was the right call.
2. The date is September 4, 2026. The opinion is stamped 09/04/2026 08:06 AM CDT. Sources reporting September 6 were wrong. We reasoned it out from a calendar yesterday; now it is simply cited.
Under Neb. Const. art. III, § 2, a petition needs signatures from 7% of registered voters, distributed to include 5% of registered voters in each of two-fifths of the counties. For 2024 the Secretary set that at 86,499 signatures, plus 5% in each of 38 of Nebraska's 93 counties.
| Legalization (437) | Regulatory (438) | |
|---|---|---|
| Submitted 2024-07-03 | 114,367 | 114,596 |
| Verified by the Secretary | 89,962 | 89,856 |
| Constitutional threshold | 86,499 | 86,499 |
| Margin above threshold | 3,463 | 3,357 |
| ∴ Needed to disqualify | 3,464 | 3,358 |
| Actually proved | 711 | 826 |
| Court's final declared count | 89,251 | 89,030 |
Every row checks against every other row. 89,962 − 711 = 89,251. 89,856 − 826 = 89,030. And the disqualification thresholds are exactly one more than the margins — which is why they were 3,464 and 3,358. Both petitions finished above the constitutional minimum by more than 2,500 signatures.
The notary is Jacy C. Todd of York, 55 — the same Todd in the signature table above (14 / 1). In February 2026 a Hall County jury convicted him of 23 counts of official misconduct (Class II misdemeanors) and one count of making a false statement under oath — 24 convictions. Judge Alfred Corey imposed a fine of $3,866.44, due by mid-April 2027. No jail time.
He filed notice of appeal on 2026-05-11 through attorney Mark Porto of Grand Island. The appeal brief was filed in early August and an evidentiary hearing was set for 2026-08-17 in Hall County District Court. Three arguments are made:
- Todd "unknowingly notarized the documents outside Egbert's presence."
- That conduct is civil malfeasance under notary regulations, not criminal "official misconduct" — and turns on whether a notary public is a "public official" who can be charged this way at all. That is the real legal question in the case.
- Prosecutors' opening statements prejudiced the jury by calling the defense "disingenuous" and saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse."
Porto asked the court to dismiss all convictions or order a new trial. Todd has called the charges "paperwork errors" and said he feels "really, really good" about the appeal.
We searched for an outcome and did not find one. No reporting we could locate says whether the 2026-08-17 hearing produced a decision, was continued, or was taken under advisement.
That means we do not know. It does not mean the appeal failed, and it does not mean it succeeded. Courts routinely take matters under advisement for weeks. The only place that settles it is the Hall County District Court docket — see below.
How to check it yourself, free: call the Hall County District Court clerk at (308) 385-5144, or use the free public access terminal in nearly any Nebraska courthouse and search by party name. (Nebraska's online JUSTICE search charges $17 for a one-time name search or $100/year for a subscription — the phone call and the courthouse terminal cost nothing, and this site runs on free sources.)
And this is on the record too: Todd is a Republican candidate for Governor of Nebraska, and in March 2026 he requested a full pardon from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Governor Jim Pillen — Hilgers being the same Attorney General who litigated to void the petitions Todd notarized. We are stating the sequence and nothing more. A conviction under appeal is a conviction, not a final one.
- The outcome of Todd's 2026-08-17 appeal hearing. Searched 2026-09-09, nothing found. Unresolved is not the same as denied, and "we could not find it" is not the same as "it did not happen." The docket settles it; the clerk's number is above.
- Whether the pardon request went anywhere. We have found the request, not a response.
- The Grand Island circulator's identity and plea terms are reported but not confirmed against a court record.
Where this page came from
This started as a YouTube transcript. That transcript called the plaintiff "John Keene" — in a case captioned Kuehn v. Evnen. It misspelled Crista Eggers. It reported a regulatory meeting we could never verify.
Then this page's own first draft, built from careful press reading, still got the panel composition wrong and missed two concurrences and a sponsor's name in the notary table.
Every layer between you and the primary source costs you something. The video cost three facts. The press coverage cost three more. The opinion cost nothing, because it is the thing itself.
#PROOF — trust, but verify. That is not a slogan on this page. It is a changelog.