Supporters seek to put Nebraska death penalty to voters in 2016

(Reuters) - An activist group seeking to override the Nebraska legislature's abolition of the death penalty submitted nearly three times as many signatures as needed on Wednesday to put the question to voters in 2016.

Nebraska in May became the first Republican-dominated state in more than 40 years to abolish capital punishment when state legislators overrode Governor Pete Ricketts' veto. The death penalty repeal is scheduled to take effect on Aug. 30.

Ricketts, a Republican, has called capital punishment a deterrent and supports the referendum effort.

Nebraskans for the Death Penalty turned in almost 167,000 signatures supporting putting the issue of capital punishment to voters, Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale's office said.

The group needs about 57,000 valid signatures to meet the 5 percent level needed to put the issue to a vote in the next general election and 114,000 to reach a 10 percent level that would suspend the legislature's decision pending the vote.

Those 5 percent and 10 percent levels must be reached in at least 38 of Nebraska's 93 counties, the secretary of state's office said. The counties have 40 days to verify the signatures after they receive petitions.

Debate about executions has revived in recent years across the United States after a number of troubled lethal injections.

The 35 executions carried out in 2014 was the lowest total in 20 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment.

Thirty-one states have the death penalty and 19 states, plus the District of Columbia ban executions. Nebraska has not executed an inmate since 1997.

Legislators who supported abolishing the death penalty had cited religious reservations, the difficulty the state can have in obtaining the drugs used for lethal injections, the risk of wrongful convictions and its unfair implementation.

(Reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Sandra Maler)