Nevada: Cutting through the hysteria: The facts about Nevada’s mostly mail election | Daniel H. Stewart/Nevada Independent

The continuing arguments against Nevada’s pandemic-forced, vote-by-mail system lack merit. There are enough bad things in the world to worry about right now without manufactured terror. With plague and economic catastrophe pressing down on us all, it is hard to see a political challenge to our democratic foundations as the calming balm the doctor would order. We have real things to panic about, and our collective ticker is handling too much stress already; theoretical panic can wait. Unfortunately, I have little to offer on the issues of jobs or health. But I would like to try to cool unnecessary electoral fears. I am, among other things, an election-law attorney who has mostly represented Republicans. And I understand the instinct behind the initial response. Pictures of unused ballots piling up in trash cans trigger kneejerk nausea. Voting is sacred; ballots are too. But there is more to the story, and even a superficial dive into relevant law and actual practice should comfort, not concern. Our elections are in good hands, run by good people, who know what they are doing.

Nevada: US judge refuses again to block Nevada’s mail-in primary | Scott Sonner/Associated Press

A federal judge has again rejected a conservative voting rights group’s bid to block the mail-in primary election now under way in Nevada as part of an effort to guard against spread of the coronavirus at traditional polling places. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du said in a strongly worded opinion late Wednesday the Voters’ Rights Initiative’s “second proverbial bite at the apple is no more fruitful than the first.” The judge in Reno said she didn’t understand why the group essentially requested reconsideration of her earlier denial of a preliminary injunction to halt the June 9 election instead of appealing it to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, especially given that early voting began May 23. Ballots already have been mailed to voters statewide. Tens of thousands of voters have filled out their ballots and returned them through the mail to county election offices where many are being processed.

Nevada: Primary underway, but argument over mail election continues | Rory Appleton/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Thousands of Nevadans began voting last week in the state’s first all-mail primary election, as concerns over the spread of COVID-19 have closed traditional polls throughout the country. As of Monday afternoon, Clark County had received 69,238 ballots, with 33,118 from Democrats and 24,451 from Republicans. Nevada and its counties had planned an all-mail election for some time. But Clark County is the only county to adjust its plans after legal pressure from state Democrats, who pushed for ballots to be sent to inactive voters and to add two more in-person voting locations on Election Day, June 9. The first week of voting saw the state GOP raise the alarm on ballots for the county’s 200,000 inactive voters being mailed to the wrong addresses, with photos of ballots tossed in trash cans and littering apartment mailbox areas. If state Democrats get their way and relax signature matching, the GOP claims, then voter fraud will be simple. But groups working hard to help traditionally disenfranchised populations, such as immigrant communities, vote during a pandemic that’s likely to depress turnout say that giving voters multiple ways to participate is critical. Low-income voters are more likely to move around a lot and be classified as inactive, but their votes should count, advocates say. Thousands of inactive voters — those who are verified as eligible voters, but who have had an election mailer returned as undeliverable — can and do vote every cycle.

Nevada: True the Vote sues again to stop Nevada’s mail-in June primary | Bill Dentzer/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nevada plaintiffs backed by a conservative voting-watch group are trying again to block the state’s all vote-by-mail June 9 primary, arguing that mail-only balloting is no longer necessary to limit the risk of COVID-19 spreading among voters. The True the Vote group’s revised complaint seeking an injunction also argues that Clark County’s procedures for distributing ballots and conducting the election unduly favor that county’s voters over those in other parts of the state. “Expanding mail balloting is unnecessary to combat COVID-19,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in a complaint filed Wednesday. “There has been no established causal link between in-person voting and the contracting of COVID.” Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske ordered the mail-in election in March in response to the spreading COVID-19 outbreak. The move brought legal challenges from both ends of the political spectrum, but Democratic interests dropped their fight when Clark County agreed last week to amend its procedures.

Nevada: Clark County election changes shrouded in mystery | Rory Appleton/Las Vegas Review-Journal

Clark County will offer more voting options in the June 9 primary election as part of sweeping changes revealed Tuesday, but how and when those decisions were made remained a mystery. Most members of the Clark County Commission and several county staff members did not respond Wednesday to requests for comment on the changes. Two commissioners applauded the new measures but said they either could not share or did not know how the changes were made. Meanwhile, Republicans feel the changes were the result of either pressure from or a deal with the Democrats and are threatening a new lawsuit of their own to block them. This week’s news came after Clark County Counsel Mary-Anne Miller submitted a court document Monday in which she said that the registrar of voters, Joseph Gloria, “at the direction of local county officials” was setting up two additional in-person voting sites in the county.

Nevada: Democrats drop lawsuit against planned all-mail primary election after Clark County agrees to more voting sites, other concessions | Riley Snyder/Nevada Independent

A cadre of Democratic Party-aligned groups is temporarily dropping a lawsuit asking a state court to implement multiple changes to the planned all-mail primary election in June after Clark County election officials agreed to expand in-person voting sites and other changes. The plaintiffs — including Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, progressive political nonprofit Priorities USA — announced their decision to drop the lawsuit in a joint press release sent out Tuesday after Clark County election officials said in a court filing that they would add two additional in-person voting sites and send out ballots to “inactive” voters. The groups also said that Clark County election officials had agreed to other stipulations, including reviewing every flagged mismatched signature by at least two reviewers of different parties and reaching out to voters within 24 hours if an issue with their signature is identified. The county officials have also agreed to “deputize and train” 20 individuals (including Democrats, Republicans and independents) to serve as “field registrars of voters” allowed to travel and receive voted, sealed mail ballots from voters on Election Day.

Nevada: Federal court rejects group’s claim that voter fraud would effect Nevada mail-in primary | J. Edward Moreno/The Hill

A federal court has rejected a claim by the Texas-based voter’s rights group True the Vote that said voter fraud would run rampant in the state’s all-mail Republican primary on June 9. The Texas-based group dedicated to the prevention of voter fraud filed a lawsuit against the state on April 21 after the state moved to have an all-mail primary due to fears of the coronavirus. U.S. District Court Judge Mirandu Du, an Obama appointee, said the plaintiff’s arguments were “difficult to track and ail to even minimally meet the first standing prong,” and “their claim of voter fraud is without any factual basis.” Du wrote that the argument that an all-mail election is more susceptible to voter fraud “seems unlikely” given that the steps taken by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office “maintain the material safeguards to preserve election integrity.” She also dismissed claims by members of True to Vote, who alleged that the all-mail election violated state law.

Nevada: Judge promises quick ruling in mail-voting case | ill Dentzer/Las Vegas Review-Journal

A federal judge said Wednesday she would rule by the end of the week on a challenge to Nevada’s plan for conducting its June 9 primary almost exclusively by mail to cut down on spreading the coronavirus. Lawyers for state and national Democratic interests and True the Vote, a conservative voting rights group, are challenging the plan from opposing angles: Democrats want more in-person polling places and other protections for ensuring voting opportunities. The conservative group is claiming an all-mail procedure presents a greater potential for ballot fraud. The parties appeared by teleconference before U.S. District Judge Miranda Du on Wednesday for more than 90 minutes on a motion for a preliminary injunction. “The fact that we have this hearing by phone because the court is limiting in-person appearances does demonstrate the unusual circumstance of our time,” Du said as she opened the hearing. “So I don’t need counsel to explain to me how COVID-19 has affected our communities. I’m well aware of that.”

Nevada: Federal judge asked to block Nevada’s mail-in primary election | Scott Sonner/Associated Press

A U.S. judge in Reno plans to hear Wednesday from lawyers for Democrats and conservative voting rights activists who are challenging — for different reasons — plans to conduct Nevada’s primary election predominantly by mail because of COVID-19. The conflict involves lawsuits at the state and federal level, both major political parties and voters with divergent political views who argue their constitutional rights will be violated if the primary moves forward as planned June 9. Three voters represented by lawyers for True the Vote Inc. Voters’ Rights Initiative are asking U.S. District Judge Miranda Du for an injunction blocking the existing format. They say it would “require the state to forgo almost all in-person voting” and “all but ensure an election replete with … ballot fraud.” “The plan alters the nature of Nevada’s election, changing it from an in-person election with absentee ballots received by request to a scheme of mailing mail-in ballots to some, but not all, registered voters and highly restricted walk-in voting options,” according to their lawsuit filed last week.

Nevada: Conservative lawsuit seeks to stop mail-in primary | Colton Lochhead/Las Vegas Review-Journal

A conservative vote-monitoring group wants Nevada to scrap its plans to conduct a mail-in primary election in June, claiming it violates the U.S. Constitution and would open the state up to voter fraud. Attorneys for True the Vote filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s plans to shift to an all-mail primary amid coronavirus concerns. In its complaint, the group says the plan “strips vital anti-vote-fraud safeguards” that exist with in-person voting that “allow local poll workers and watchers to monitor who is voting and deny voting and issue challenges if appropriate.” Cegavske made the move to a mail primary because of increased risk and mitigation efforts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of her plan includes opening up one in-person polling place in each county. In normal elections, voters would have to request an absentee ballot. The group says that eliminating that requesting process creates “fraud potential of having unrequested, perhaps unexpected ballots arriving around the state.” That could lead to ballots being ignored or left in a pile of letters, which “invites ballot fraud.”

Nevada: Democrats sue state’s top elections official over vote-by-mail primary election plan | James DeHaven/Reno Gazette Journal

The Nevada State Democratic Party has filed a lawsuit to force changes to the state’s “unconstitutional” vote-by-mail primary election plan.  The 65-page suit, filed in Carson City District Court on Thursday, was heralded in a joint statement from several prominent Democrats, including Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez. “These steps are essential to holding a safe, fair, and accessible election on June 9,” Perez wrote. “In the midst of a global pandemic, our leaders should be working to help us safely exercise our right to vote — not standing in the way.  “It’s never been more urgent to take action that will expand access to voting, protect public health, and preserve Nevadans’ right to make their voices heard.”

Nevada: Democrats raise concerns over voter access ahead of June’s all-mail primary election | James DeHaven/Reno Gazette Journal

The Nevada State Democratic Party is calling on the state’s top election official to expand voter access to ballots delivered ahead of June’s all-mail primary election. A Friday letter from the party’s attorneys urges Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske to send ballots to all registered voters, not just active voters, and to expand the number of “well-organized and hygienic” primary election polling places permitted in each county. It goes on to ask that state elections officials stop rejecting ballots with mismatched signatures and start accepting those postmarked by Election Day. Cegavske, Republicans’ lone statewide officeholder, last month joined elections officials around the country in shifting to a mail-in election system meant to limit the potential spread of coronavirus at polling places. Attorneys for the state Democratic party acknowledged the need for many of those precautions, but threatened litigation over other steps — such as sending ballots only to active voters — that they feel are unconstitutional.

Nevada: Nevadans to mail in ballots for June’s primary because of COVID-19 | James DeHaven/Reno Gazette Journal

Nevada will hold a nearly all-mail primary election in June, adding to a growing tally of states that have postponed or canceled in-person voting during the coronavirus outbreak. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, the state’s top elections official, on Tuesday announced her office would mail absentee ballots to all of the Silver State’s active voters, who will mark their candidate choices at home before returning ballots in the mail or at a designated county drop-off location. Cegavske says the virus-prevention effort will only apply to the June 9 primary, and not November’s general election. “Because of the many uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the immediate need to begin preparations for the 2020 primary election, it became necessary for me to take action regarding how the election will be conducted,” Cegavske said in a statement.  “Based on extensive conversations with Nevada’s 17 county election officials, we have jointly determined that the best option for the primary election is to conduct an all-mail election.”

Nevada: Election officials plan mail-only primary election, no in-person voting amid coronavirus fears | Riley Snyder and Jackie Valley/Nevada Independent

Nevada election officials are planning to effectively cancel in-person voting and move the state’s primary election on June 9 to mail ballots only in the wake of the coronavirus crisis gripping the nation, two knowledgeable sources confirmed. An official announcement is expected today. It’s the latest activity facing a logistical change as officials try to prevent the spread of the upper-respiratory disease. Questions have surfaced regarding the safety of in-person voting, a process that can trigger lines of people and multiple surface touch points as voters make their selections. A recent legislative change allows any voter to request a ballot by mail, but must make the request by no later than the 14th calendar day preceding the election — May 26 for this election cycle. Delivery of mail ballots begins no later than 20 days before Election Day.

Nevada: Caucus chaos again? Experts fear vote-counting problems in Nevada | Adam Edelman/NBC

A new early-voting system, high turnout and questions about a never-before-used digital tool being used to process results could threaten the success of the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday, election experts told NBC News. “I don’t see how any technologist or any party official or any political scientist can promise that this will turn out OK,” said Mark Lindeman, the director of science and technology policy for Verified Voting, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that advocates for election accuracy and transparency. “There are too many tools and procedures that are being rolled out, some at the last minute,” he continued. “And my impression is that the people on the ground who are charged with implementing these procedures and using these tools are not confident they can do it.” Lindeman added, “I hope that it goes better than Iowa, but it is definitely at risk for similar reasons.”

Nevada: Will there be more presidential caucus chaos? ‘Nevada is just praying’ | Seema Mehta and Matt Pearce/Los Angeles Times

Dozens of Democratic volunteers scurried around Doña Maria Mexican Restaurant in polite pandemonium last week as they staged a mock caucus to prepare for the real thing on Saturday in Nevada. A dining area filled with cries of “Salma Hayek!” “Jennifer Lopez!” “Salma Hayek!” as the volunteers playfully grouped themselves by favorite celebrity rather than by favorite candidate to familiarize themselves with the state’s caucus process. That was the fun part. But when it came time to actually count votes — not a mere act of addition but a whole range of subtraction, multiplication and division to award delegates — the room fell quiet as participants stared at a whiteboard spreadsheet more than eight columns wide. The complexity of Nevada’s new rules, which now include adding absentee early voters to the mix, had set in. Democratic officials and campaigns in Nevada are desperately hoping to avoid another caucus meltdown like the one this month in Iowa, where campaigns devoted millions of dollars and deployed hundreds of volunteers in the hopes of emerging as clear winners, only to see the results delayed, misreported and still under challenge of recount. In recent weeks, the Nevada Democratic Party ditched a new app it had planned to use to report results and trained caucus volunteers on new procedures. Meanwhile, campaigns pressured party officials behind the scenes to release more information about how, exactly, the state planned to avoid a retread of the Iowa fiasco. “Everybody in Nevada is just praying and focused on not being Iowa,” said Tick Segerblom, a commissioner in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. “I think we’ve learned our lesson.”

Nevada: In Nevada, a last-minute scramble to make voting tech work | Reed Albergotti/The Washington Post

As early voting came to a close here Tuesday evening, a small group of caucus volunteers waited in the parking lot of a dimly lit strip mall to get a hands-on demonstration of the software they would use to tally votes during Saturday’s Democratic caucus. “This will not be like Iowa,” one of the volunteers said defiantly, referring to the caucus process in that state roiled by technological mishaps. She said she was determined to learn how the software worked and avert any embarrassing glitches. She asked not to be named for fear of upsetting party officials here. As Democratic presidential hopefuls campaign here, the role of technology has hung like a cloud over the process that will help determine the party’s nominee. Nevada’s place early on in the presidential nominating process is a point of pride in this fast-growing Western state. And everyone from volunteers to party officials to ordinary voters is hoping it doesn’t turn into an embarrassment. Nevada’s Democratic Party, which runs the caucus, had planned to use software developed by the same company behind Iowa’s botched caucus app. Nevada had less than three weeks to put a new system in place, a rush to the finish line that also contributed to Iowa’s problems.

Nevada: ‘A complete disaster’: Fears grow over potential Nevada caucus malfunction | Laura Barrón-López

The process will break down like this: On caucus day, each precinct chair will be given a party-purchased iPad that will have a link to a Google form — dubbed a “caucus calculator” — saved on it. Pre-loaded on the form will be the early vote total from that precinct. The precinct chair will then input vote totals after the first and second votes. Under caucus rules, voters choose their preferred candidate at the outset, known as the first alignment. But if their candidate fails to reach 15 percent, they can switch to a different candidate, or seek to persuade supporters of another candidate who fails to reach 15 percent to help their candidate clear that threshold during the second alignment. The prompts on the Google form are expected to look similar to how they appear on the physical caucus reporting sheet. When the first and second alignments are completed, the totals will be relayed over the cloud to the Nevada Democratic Party via the Google form, which on the back end appears as a Google spreadsheet. Separately, the precinct chair or site lead will take the printed caucus reporting sheets — each campaign must sign off on them first — and call the Nevada Democratic Party boiler room via a secure hotline. (Site leads oversee multiple precinct chairs in caucusing at a single large location.)

Nevada: Democrats scramble to avoid Iowa-like chaos as Democratic caucuses approach | Kari Paul/The Guardian

Democratic party officials in Nevada are rushing to avoid the fate of Iowa, where technological and organizational failure left the first caucus in the 2020 presidential race without a clear winner. Nevada Democratic party officials had initially planned to rely on the same app that caused chaos in Iowa to transfer results from local precincts during the caucus on 22 February. But during the Iowa vote, a “coding issue” caused the app, developed haphazardly and on a low budget by the tech firm Shadow, to report only partial data from the state’s 1,700 caucus sites. Spotty cellphone coverage in some voting locations, poor training of some caucus volunteers and troubles with a backup phone line to report results compounded the chaos. Following the Iowa caucus, Nevada officials said they were determined to avoid similar problems. “NV Dems can confidently say that what happened in the Iowa caucus last night will not happen in Nevada,” the state Democratic party chair, William McCurdy II, said in a statement at the time. Since then, it has been difficult to pin down the Nevada Democratic party regarding what process it will use instead. It did not respond to the Guardian’s requests for comment and its website includes no information on the topic.

Nevada: Democrats Say They’ll Replace Their Caucus App With iPads And A Google Form | Kaleigh Rogers/FiveThirtyEight

In just two days, Nevadans will begin early voting in the state’s Democratic caucuses. For the past few weeks, it’s been unclear how those votes would be integrated into the overall vote tallies after Nevada Democrats were spooked by the chaos in Iowa’s Democratic primary and decided to toss a previous plan to use an app. But today, the state Democratic party revealed how it intends to incorporate those early votes into the live caucuses on Feb. 22: “a simple, user-friendly calculator.” What that means, exactly, is still a bit unclear. In a memo sent to campaigns Thursday and shared with FiveThirtyEight, the party wrote that “the caucus calculator will only be used on party-purchased iPads provided to trained precinct chairs and accessed through a secure Google web form.” The memo didn’t provide any specifics about whether the calculator would be accessed through the Google form, or whether the Google form itself is the calculator. It’s also not clear if early-vote tallies will live on the web, or if they’ll be pre-loaded onto each district’s iPad. The state party did not immediately respond to our request for further comment.

Nevada: First test of Nevada Democrats’ new caucus plan arrives as early vote begins | Megan Messerly/Nevada Independent

Nevada Democrats will head to early voting sites across the state on Saturday — from the Old Post Office in Fallon to the Chinatown Plaza Mall in Las Vegas — to begin casting their presidential preferences ahead of the state’s Feb. 22 caucus. In some ways, it’s an exciting moment for Democrats here in the Silver State: Never before have they been able to participate early in the state’s presidential caucus, as they will over a four-day period. In others, it’s a nerve-wracking one: No one quite knows if the new process the party has quickly re-designed in the wake of Iowa’s problem-plagued contest earlier this month is going to work. What they do know is that beginning Saturday, Nevada Democrats, or those wishing to re-register as a Democrat, will show up at roughly 80 sites across the state to cast their early caucus votes. Once voters are there, a volunteer will check a PDF voter roll to confirm their registration, or direct them to fill out a voter registration form if they aren’t, since Democrats here allow same-day registration for the caucus. From there, they’ll check in on an iPad through Google Forms and be given a paper scannable ballot, similar to a Scantron, where they will be asked to mark a minimum of three and up to five presidential preferences in order. Once they’re done, that ballot and a paper voter card, both of which contain a unique voter PIN to match the ballot to the person, will be placed into a secure ballot box, which will be taken to a designated ballot processing hub to be scanned.

Nevada: Volunteers and campaigns worry about results reporting ahead of Nevada caucuses | Holmes Lybrand, Dianne Gallagher, Pamela Kirkland and Dan Merica/CNN

With the Nevada Democratic caucuses only a week away, both caucus workers and presidential campaigns are worried about the lack of detail the state party is providing about how the results reporting process will work. The worries come after the state party stopped working with Shadow Inc., the company behind the app whose “coding errors” were at the heart of the chaos of the Iowa caucuses. Having scrapped plans to use a pair of Shadow’s apps, the parties will instead use a “caucus calculator,” as outlined in a new memo released by the Nevada State Democratic Party Thursday. Described as “user friendly,” the calculator will be used to add early voting data into each precinct and calculate totals on caucus day, February 22, along with paper work sheets. The tool, which the party does not consider an app, will be available on iPads owned by the party and “accessed through a secure Google web form.” A similar memo was sent to the presidential campaigns on Monday.

Nevada: Democrats lay out new plan for caucuses, trying to alleviate growing concerns about the process | Holly Bailey and Isaac Stanley-Becker/The Washington Post

After scrapping a pair of apps similar to the one that caused chaos in Iowa, the Nevada State Democratic Party said it would use paper ballots and an online check-in process in its presidential caucuses, a plan unlikely to end growing concerns about the coming vote. In a memo distributed to representatives of the 2020 campaigns on Monday night, party officials outlined several new procedures for early caucusing, set to begin Saturday. Among them was the use of an online Google check-in form designed to help party officials “track participants and streamline data collection” and the assignment of a numeric “voter PIN” and separate identification number tied to state voter registration to help route a participant’s ballot to their home precinct. The plan comes a week after Nevada Democrats were forced to rip up their caucus plans in the aftermath of Iowa’s disastrous caucus result. The party had been set to use two specially designed apps developed by political technology firm Shadow, the same company that designed the vote-recording app blamed for reporting issues in Iowa. But experts warned that this new proposal would leave the caucuses vulnerable to big security threats. They said, too, that they were puzzled by how the plan would work.

Nevada: Democrats to use scannable ballot for early voting, iPad with Google Forms for check in | Megan Messerly/Nevada Independent

Nevada Democrats will replace their app-based early voting process for the caucus with a scannable paper ballot, the first concrete details to emerge about the new process the party is designing in the wake of Iowa’s problem-plagued contest last week. Under the new system, early voters will fill out paper ballots that will be scanned at the end of each day, like a Scantron, at designated processing hubs monitored by the state party. Those paper ballots will be linked to voters’ unique secretary of state ID numbers — which will ensure their votes will flow to their home precinct to be counted alongside their neighbors’ on Caucus Day — through use of a check-in form, via Google Forms, as well as a paper back-up voter card. The Nevada State Democratic Party released the new details to the presidential campaigns Monday evening in a memo, which the party later provided to The Nevada Independent . The party’s executive director Alana Mounce and caucus director Shelby Wiltz also joined calls with individual campaigns to discuss the memo.

Nevada: Democrats Tight-Lipped About Vote-Counting Plans | Tarini Parti and Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

The Nevada Democratic Party is still working on its process for conducting and transmitting the results of its Feb. 22 caucuses and has been unable to answer questions about how that will be carried out, causing alarm among volunteers and campaigns. With early voting starting in less than a week, volunteers who have attended training sessions said they were confused about the process and technology they were expected to use for the state’s caucuses. And questions from campaigns to the state party have either been ignored or only heightened concerns when answered, according to campaign aides. The state party has said that it is evaluating its process and will have backups including paper records in place to ensure that the caucuses run smoothly. In the aftermath of the debacle in Iowa’s caucuses, where glitchy technology and poor planning cast confusion over the outcome, the Nevada State Democratic Party said it would no longer use an app built by Shadow Inc., the vendor in charge of a similar app that failed in Iowa. Nevada’s app was set to play an even bigger role than the one in Iowa did, according to people familiar with the issue. The Nevada Democratic Party, which is implementing early voting for its caucuses for the first time, was planning on using the app to fold in early voting results with caucus night alignments, calculate the threshold required for viability for candidates and the realignment results and then transmit them. Ditching the app has forced the party to make changes to multiple parts of the process, the people said. Some of those changes still aren’t clear, they said.

Nevada: Election Security Institute Criticizes Newly-Unveiled Nevada Caucus App After Iowa Disaster | Hunter Moyler/Newsweek

An institute that studies election security criticized the Nevada Democratic Party for planning to use a digital tool for its caucuses, arguing that Nevada was likely to run into many of the same issues that Iowa did with its voting app last week. The Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Institute began its Twitter thread Sunday with a link to a story from The Nevada Independent, which detailed how the Nevada Democratic Party (NDP) will be using a digital “tool” on the day of that state’s caucuses on February 22. The Independent reported that NDP staffers made a distinction between its tool and the app that was used by the Iowa Democratic Party for their caucuses on February 3. A faulty app that was not tested properly and had coding issues led to delays of the Iowa results. “Deja Vu; this time in NV,” OSET’s first tweet read. “Let’s be clear from the start: their’s is an ‘App’ and no designation of ‘tool’ changes that. Let’s stop playing word games here. The fact that its pre-loaded & may not use mobile connectivity is the only ‘difference.'” The institute dismissed the NDP’s distinction between an “app” and a “tool,” arguing that any difference between the two was superficial.

Nevada: Democrats Canceled Their Caucus App. But That Poses Its Own Problems. | Kaleigh Rogers and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux/FiveThirtyEight

A week ago, Nevada Democrats were planning to use an app for their caucuses on Feb. 22. The chaos in Iowa has put an end to that. The Nevada Democratic Party confirmed to FiveThirtyEight that it has “eliminated the option of using an app at any step in the caucus process,” Molly Forgey, the party’s communications director, said Friday. The app that was going to be used was reportedly developed by Shadow Inc., the company that developed the infamous app for the Iowa Democratic Party. But that doesn’t mean Nevada is out of the woods. Scrapping the app could also lead to some complications thanks to a new addition to the Silver State’s caucuses this year: early voting. The Nevada Democratic Party hasn’t yet revealed what it plans to do instead — “At this time, we’re considering all of our options,” Forgey said — though using paper and phoning in results seems like an obvious solution. But the party’s plan to introduce early voting this year — slated to start on Feb. 15 — relied heavily on a functioning app, and it’s unclear how those votes will now be incorporated during the in-person caucuses.

Nevada: Democrats fret about another tech disaster in Nevada caucuses following the mess in Iowa | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Democrats who are still reeling from last week’s Iowa debacle are increasingly worried about another technology disaster in the next caucus state: Nevada. Nevada Democrats initially forswore using apps after a coding error and rushed design choices threw the Iowa contest into chaos. They backpedaled over the weekend, though, and said precinct leaders will be given an iPad-based tool to sync early voters’ preferences with choices from people who come to the Feb. 22 caucuses, the Nevada Independent’s Megan Messerly reported. And in an echo of Iowa that is giving heartburn to some, the state party hasn’t said who built the app or how it’s being tested and vetted for security vulnerabilities. “I volunteered to do this because I’m a loyal Democrat, and there’s nothing more I want to do than defeat Donald Trump,” Seth Morrison, a caucus volunteer, told Megan. “But if we allow this to go down and it’s another Iowa, what does this do for my party?” The concerns come as Democrats are struggling to prove they have the tech and cybersecurity savvy to endure another presidential race four years after Hillary Clinton’s campaign was upended by a Russian hacking and disinformation campaign focused on smearing her and aiding Donald Trump.

Nevada: Democrats Test a Caucus Plan ‘Without Something You Can Download on Your Phone’ | Jennifer Medina/The New York Times

After abandoning plans to use the same kind of app that led to a debacle in Iowa, Nevada Democratic officials are testing backup plans this weekend as they attempt to come up with a clear alternative for their own state caucus, which begins in less than two weeks. Though party leaders in Nevada are now vowing not to use any kind of app to tally the results of their Feb. 22 caucus, it remains unclear what they will put in their place. “We are not using an app, we are not using something you can download on your phone,” said Alana Mounce, the executive director of the Nevada Democrats. But what they will use instead is still unknown and presidential campaigns are increasingly anxious about what will happen when early voting begins next weekend. The Nevada Democrats began testing backup procedures Friday, but state party officials declined to give any details on what they were testing, other than to say that it would not be a phone-based app. By Tuesday morning, even before the full scope of the chaos in Iowa had become clear, state party officials scrapped their plans to use an app made by Shadow Inc., the same firm that created a caucus app for Iowa.

Nevada: Caucus will use new ‘iPad tool’ they swear isn’t an app and things don’t sound great | Marcus Gilmer/Mashable

Oh lordy, here we go again. The Nevada State Democratic Party is planning to use a new app for the state’s caucus on Saturday, Feb. 22, just days after it abandoned the app that threw the Iowa caucus into chaos. Adding to the fun: Nevada Dems are refusing to call it an app. Per the Nevada Independent, the “new caucus tool that will be preloaded onto iPads” was introduced to volunteers at a training session on Saturday.  According to a video used in the training session that the Independent viewed, the instructor “tells volunteers that the new mechanism ‘is not an app’ but should be thought of as ‘a tool.'”