Nevada identifies voter history errors on website, fixes underway
After numerous Nevada voters saw irregularities in their voter history on Sunday, the secretary of state’s office said it has identified the issues and is fixing them, according to a statement Monday evening.
The office learned Sunday there were possible technical issues relating to Nevadans’ voting history for people who did not participate in the Feb. 6 presidential primary. It said elections and IT staff began working immediately with county clerks and registrars Monday morning.
It determined that the problem resulted in some counties not taking the proper steps to upload their voter registration. Every night each county uploads their voter registration to the secretary of state’s database, which executes code to create the statewide voter registration file that Nevadans see when they log into vote.nv.gov, according to the secretary of state’s office.
The systems used by some counties require additional steps to be taken to ensure that voters who did not return their ballot do not have vote history, the secretary of state’s office said. Some of those steps were not taken, which resulted in inaccurate data on the website.
“Our office has been validating new files from each county and moving them into production as soon as the accuracy of the data is verified,” the secretary of state’s office said in the statement.
All voter data should be accurate within 48 hours, and a comprehensive report will be provided later, according to the secretary of state’s office.
“Again, this is an error that relates to the code used for when a voter is sent a mail ballot and does not return it; it has no connection in any way to vote tabulation,” the office said in a statement. The top-down Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) project at the Secretary of State’s office will go live prior to the June 2024 election, and remove the need for these outdated processes.”
In an earlier statement Monday morning, the office also noted that voters’ history is generated separately from Nevada’s election results. SilverStateElection.NV.gov, which posts election results, and county canvasses of the votes are accurate and unaffected by the technical issues, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo posted on X that the secretary of state’s office is working diligently to resolve the issues on its website.
Las Vegas resident and registered Republican Daphne Lee said she and her family checked the secretary of state’s website on Sunday to see their voter history after she heard from a few people that their voting history was incorrect. The site showed that she and her family’s mail-in ballots were counted for the primary, even though none of them participated in the election. She tried to opt out of future mail-in ballots and was met with a message saying she was not currently registered to vote, and her voting history no longer existed.
“It’s just so frustrating,” Lee said in a phone interview. “This makes everyone uncomfortable.”
In a Monday statement, the Nevada Republican Party said it received reports from numerous registered Republican voters who did not participate in the presidential primary that their mail ballot was received and counted by the state.
The Nevada Republican Party is in communication with the secretary of state’s office to conduct an investigation into the issues, the Nevada GOP said in the statement.
“We take these reports very seriously,” said Chairman Michael McDonald, who has long cast doubts on Nevada’s election processes and touted unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. “The cornerstone of our Republic is the trust and confidence of the American people in the electoral process. Any indication of irregularities must be thoroughly investigated to ensure the integrity of our elections.”
Voters can check their registration information at https://www.nvsos.gov/votersearch/.
Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.
