Investigation Called on Douglas Co. Election Commissioner Dave Phipps
From one polling place to another, especially East of 72nd Street, voters ran into problems.
"At least 10% of the voters that walked into those precincts actually were in the wrong precinct and had to find their other precinct.">
Local community groups blame the so-called precinct shuffle, on Commissioner Dave Phipps' move before the primaries to consolidate precincts and polling locations.
"He mentioned the fact that, well it's because of budget cuts, there was no intent to disenfranchise voters, he was sorry that he didn't communicate in a more effective manner, and then I read the emails."
Emails between Phipps and a legislative aide, that show Phipps was deeply involved in creating the bill that allowed him to close one third of the polling places.
"One of our problems is that he down played his involvement of the creation of the bill the entire time and in fact he just said well I'm just implementing the law that the current legislature created. Well in fact he created and implemented the law based on the emails."
Phipps doesn't deny it.
"In fact I wrote about 95% of LB 449."
The community groups question Phipps' motives and want to make sure politics didn't play a role in the poll closings.
"I don't know what they would be investigating I don't know who would investigate it but you know if they want to come in and investigate something that passed unanimously, more than pleased to have them do that."
It looks like that will happen.
State Senator Heath Mello sent a letter to the Chairman of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee requesting an investigation of LB 449.

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