I just went through training last week and registered with the State of AZ for collecting signatures. There are a ton of ways to accidentally invalidate signatures even if people wanted to sign without being lied to. Those petitions often need almost twice the minimum signatures simply to get past that threshold since so many are invalidated.

First, only registered voters can sign. Each page of signatures is for a specific county and the signature must be on a page for the county where they are registered to vote, not necessarily where the signature is made. A misspelled address will invalidate a signature. Writing or signing outside the boxes will invalidate a signature. And the paperwork needs to be filled out correctly by the collector, or the entire page of signatures is useless. Every page has the ID of the registered petition collector, and if they are with a group, that is tied to the specific group and petition.

I’m sure Nebraska has similar requirements. Some states have even thrown away entire groups of signatures for similar issues like the article. If a collection group is confirmed to have been lying to voters about the petition, all of their collected signatures can be tossed out.