LINCOLN, Nebraska – Voters in Nebraska will have to choose between two competing abortion laws: expanding abortion rights or limiting them to the current 12-week ban, a development likely to drive more voters to the polls in a state that could have one of its five electoral votes at stake in the hotly contested presidential race.

Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen announced Friday that the competing initiatives had each collected enough signatures to be placed on the November ballot, making Nebraska the first state to have competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Nebraska is also the last of several states to vote on abortion legislation in November, including swing states Arizona and Nevada, where abortion laws could lead to higher voter turnout. Other states include Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and South Dakota. New York has a law that supporters say will effectively guarantee access to abortion, although it does not specifically mention abortion.

In Nebraska, organizers of the competing effort announced last month that they had submitted far more signatures than the roughly 123,000 required.

One of the initiatives, similar to other ballots in the US, is to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution until the pregnancy is viable or later to protect the health of the pregnant woman. The organizers said they had submitted more than 207,000 signatures.

The other measure would add the current 12-week ban to the constitution, with exceptions for rape, incest and saving the life of the pregnant woman. Organizers said they had submitted more than 205,000 signatures.

Evnen said his office had confirmed more than 136,000 signatures for both proposals.

Organizers of a third proposal, which would have effectively banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy and defined embryos as human beings, did not submit any petitions.

It is possible that voters will ultimately approve both measures, but since they compete with each other and therefore both cannot be enshrined in the constitution, the measure with the most yes votes will pass, Evnen said.

Evnen’s office said if both measures are approved by voters, Gov. Jim Pillen would be responsible for determining whether a conflict exists. Asked if there was a scenario in which the Republican governor could order the measure with the lower vote count to be enshrined in the constitution, Evnen’s office said it saw no way that could happen, but added it could not speak for the governor.

When asked the same question, Pillen’s office said it did not want to “comment on a hypothetical future legal issue” but stopped short of ensuring that the measure with the most votes would be included in the state constitution.

“The overwhelming majority of Nebraskans support strong constitutional protections for the unborn, so the governor expects only the pro-life initiative will prevail,” Laura Strimple, a spokeswoman for Pillen, said in an email to The Associated Press. “In any other scenario, the governor will consult with the attorney general regarding his legal obligations.”

Most Republican-controlled states have enacted some form of abortion ban since the Roe ruling was overturned, which ended 50 years of abortion rights across the U.S. But abortion rights advocates have prevailed in all seven votes on the issue that have been put to voters at the state level since 2022.

This is consistent with opinion polls showing growing support for abortion rights, including a recent Associated Press/NORC poll that found that six in 10 Americans believe their state should allow women to have a legal abortion if they do not want to become pregnant for any reason.

Fourteen states currently ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Four states ban it after about six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Nebraska and North Carolina are the only states that have opted for a ban that takes effect after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

In Nebraska, abortion in the 2nd Congressional District around Omaha could play an outsized role in both the U.S. House of Representatives and presidential elections.

The race for the House seat – a rematch between Republican Rep. Don Bacon and Democratic challenger and Sen. Tony Vargas – is widely seen as a neck-and-neck race. Bacon defeated Vargas by less than 3 percentage points in 2022, and Vargas has raised more money than he did during this campaign, $300,000 more in cash, according to the latest campaign finance reports released last month.

In the presidential election, higher turnout could help Vice President Kamala Harris win the district’s lone electoral vote. Nebraska is one of two states that splits its electoral votes, and while the state as a whole is reliably Republican, Omaha County is a competitive one.

The 2nd District has awarded its electoral votes to a Democratic presidential candidate twice – to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Joe Biden in 2020.