By KEVIN ABOUREZK / Lincoln Journal Star
Saturday, Oct 13, 2007 - 12:40:41 am CDT
A prominent affirmative-action critic is targeting Nebraska as one of five states where he hopes to get voters to decide in November 2008 to end the use of racial, ethnic and gender preferences by public colleges and state and local agencies.Ward Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, has begun an effort to put an initiative on the Nov. 4, 2008, ballot in Nebraska that would ban the state from granting preferential treatment to people based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin. The initiative would affect the areas of public employment, public education and public contracting.Connerly said the ACRI has hired National Ballot Access of Lawrenceville, Ga., to gather signatures for the ballot initiative and plans to submit petition language to the state for review within three weeks.
He said he hopes to have petition circulators working to get signatures within 45 days in Nebraska.“I think by the end of the year, certainly, we will be on the streets … gathering signatures,” he said.In addition to Nebraska, Connerly is targeting Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Oklahoma as states that would consider ballot measures ending state preferential treatment in November 2008.He said he is focusing on those states because they seem like states that would pass such measures and because of the ease with which measures can be put on ballots in those states.Of those states, only Colorado lacks a history of social conservatism, though that state has a large conservative minority that has managed to win key ballot victories in recent decades, according the Chronicle of Higher Education.
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