Talk:Nebraska Legislature

Criticism?

The section on Criticism seems misplaced. The rest of this article is about history and technical issues, while this section is about current politics. --Palnatoke 09:56, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I concur, the section on criticism seems rather much like personal criticism and is misplaced. --Tobias Davis 10:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I've commented it out for the time being. – Swid ^{(talk | edits)} 16:57, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Nebraska Legislature: although unicameral and nonpartisan, politics abounds

I have studied with interest the unicameral (or one house) legislature which the State of Nebraska uses. The single lawmaking body is comprised of 49 members who are classed as senators. They serve for four year terms and are constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms. The senators are also elected on nonpartisan ballots.

However, despite its nonpartisan nature; I don't think I have ever seen a more politicized system than Nebraska's. Every bill and resolution has to make at least six stops in the legislative process before it goes on to the governor for his signature or rejection by veto. Anywhere along the line, a bill can be "indefinitely postponed," effectively killing the measure.

It is also rumored that despite the constitutional requirements that the Nebraska Legislature be a nonpartisan body; the political parties do have great influence. The Democratic and Republican parties do endorse candidates for the Legislature; in other words a party's organization can support a candidate for the Legislature and the parties openly endorse candidates for the Legislature. The only official difference of course is that the candidates do not run under political party labels. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rick4404 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

Why don't we list party labels next to candidate names? I've been looking all over for a list like this. If somebody knows were to find one, please update the article. A10brown 23:43, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Majority: 17

In the table under "Membership", there is a row with "Majority: 17". What on Earth does that mean? -- Jao 16:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

It designates the number of members the majority party has over the minority party. Such numbers are a staple of legislative articles, even though, in this case, it is used for a legislature whose members are elected on a nonpartisan basis and said legislature has no organized party structure within it anyway.

Furthermore, the number itself was incorrect; the "majority" is now 16, as there were a couple of legislator party changes during/after the most recent session. – Swid ^{(talk · edits)} 16:58, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for clarifying. That's certainly a useful concept, although I wish they could have chosen a less confusing word for it. I would have assumed "Majority" in this kind of table to mean "the number of seats needed for a simple majority" (in this case 25). It may be that I'm unfamiliar with American (or two-party-system) terminology, or I'm just bad at English, but perhaps the Majority article should be amended to accomodate this alternative meaning. (By the way, if one party had 23 and the other 20, would the larger party be said to have "a majority of 3", despite only having a plurality, not a majority?) -- Jao 16:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Even with a nonpartisin legislature, they still elect a speaker and organize committees and must select chairmen and other leaders. Obviously they will organize based on whether members support conservative or liberal issues. Many of their members are moderate. Nebraska is not a liberal state and more than half of their members are not liberals or kooks, so they elect a speaker and other leaders who are reasonable mainstream members of the community. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.116.212.23 (talk) 14:15, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Upper house?

Category:State upper houses in the United States has 49 entries, because Nebraska, being unicameral, has a Senate that is not the upper house. Do other editors agree with leaving Nebraska out of this category? --DThomsen8 (talk) 17:39, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Outdated Districts

I'm not at all proficient at Wikipedia, but I use this tool for my research. I do not know how to update this page. However, the Unicam has redistricted the entire state and this new map is in effect. Please, someone with come degree of competence in Wikipedia, update this page.

See http://nebraskalegislature.gov/about/leg_map.php

Respectfully. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.134.132.129 (talk) 14:06, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Nickname

I've edited a passage stating that 'the Legislature is also often known as "the Unicameral", or "the Unicam"'; I've removed the last three words.

My own unquantified experience as a Nebraskan is that "the Unicameral" is in very common usage; "the Unicam" is quite rare. A Google investigation seems to support my impression. Doing a Google search for (nebraska "the unicameral" -"unicameral legislature"), intended to find uses of "the unicameral" that exclude "the unicameral legislature", produces 202,000 hits. A search for (nebraska "the unicam" -"unicameral legislature") produces only 6,660 hits. By this reckoning, "the Unicameral" is used roughly 30 times as often as "the Unicam". Moreover, the sources that showed up in the first search seemed to be stronger: books at the Amazon site, the Legislature's own websites, the Nebraska State Historical Society, etc. The second search seemed to produce more links to blogs, Twitter feeds, echoes of this WP article, and the like.

A search of the Omaha World-Herald archives, 1983-2013, for "unicameral" produced 719 hits. A search for "unicam" produced 31. Again, this suggests that the first is used >20 times as often as the second.

If "the Unicam" is restored as a nickname, it should be supported by a citation: not just a link to a website that uses the phrase, but a reputable source positively asserting that the nickname is in common usage. Ammodramus (talk) 19:05, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Party affiliation for information purposes

The section says "Note: The Nebraska Legislature is nonpartisan; members' party affiliations are for informational purposes only."

Assuming that sentence is referring to the colors in the first column, that's all fine and good, but there is no key or legend as to the meaning of the colors. We can probably assume red is Republican and blue is Democratic, but what is the yellow? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.20.233 (talk) 19:03, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Bob Krist: party

Several editors have changed Bob Krist's party registration from Republican to independent. I've reverted these.

Krist has stated that he'll run as a third-party candidate against Peter Ricketts in the 2018 gubernatorial election. Many of the stories on the subject have said that Krist will leave the Republican party, giving the impression that he's already done so. However, a July 17, 2017 article in the Omaha World-Herald includes the statement "He said he intends to remain a Republican until his term ends." Unless and until we've got a more recent source stating that Krist has actually changed his registration, we should assume that he's still an R. Ammodramus (talk) 03:58, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

libertarian

The sidebar says there's one libertarian candidate, but in the membership subsection the only non-Republican/Democrat appears to be Ernie Chambers, an independent. Is Chambers a libertarian? Or is something missing here? GeauxDevils (talk) 13:46, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Wikidata list

Nebraska state legislatures from 1866 through 2021 are in Wikidata. -- M2545 (talk) 12:15, 11 January 2021 (UTC)