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As controversy swirls in Florida, Nebraska elections go smoothly

Posted at 6:07 PM, Nov 16, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-16 19:07:23-05

Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale has been on the job since 2000. The same year the presidential election came down to a recount in Florida. 

Now Gale is leaving his post and again there's talk of election fraud in Florida. 

"It affects people's attitude across the country of like 'well gee can we trust our state?" says Gale. 

Gale says you can trust the process in Nebraska. Unlike Florida, Nebraska uses the same ballot system for all 93 counties. The state made that decision after congress gave all 50 states money to update election equipment after the 2000 Florida recount.

"We bought the same equipment and the same voter registration system state-wide. So it was uniform and standard and everybody was doing it the same way," says Gale. 

The state has also stuck with paper ballots, while many others vote electronically.

"Cyber security attacks or going to be much more frequent and common in the states that have electronic voting," says Gale. 

The Secretary of State's office will likely just be overseeing one recount, that's for the District 10 legislative seat in northwest Omaha .

That recount process will be the same one that took place after election day to count the original total. So it's unlikely the result of the race will change.

"Because are system is so accurate, we haven't had the kind of equipment problems that they've have had in Florida," says Gale. 

After every major election, Gale's office goes back and hand counts a few select precincts and compares them to the machine tabulations just to make sure the equipment is counting everybody’s vote.