It may become easier for registered voters with disabilities to get Nevada absentee ballots on a long-term basis.
Senate Bill 447 would allow registered voters with a physical disability to request an absentee ballot for every election they are eligible to vote in. The Senate Legislative Operations and Elections Committee heard the bill on Monday without taking action.
Nevada’s political parties may have the option of offering voters a presidential primary in 2020 instead of a caucus system. Assembly Bill 293 would allow each political party to have a presidential preference primary instead of a caucus. The move could reshape how Nevada voters help pick the Republican and Democratic nominees for president. “This just adds another option on the menu,” Assemblyman Nelson Araujo, D-Las Vegas, told the Assembly Legislative Operations and Elections Committee on Tuesday. “If both parties still opt into the caucus system that they are using today, they are more than welcome to do so.”
State Senate Democrats are blocking a bill introduced by a Republican that would switch from partisan to open primaries, allowing all registered voters regardless of party in Nevada to participate. Senate Bill 103 introduced by state Sen. James Settelmeyer, R-Minden, would have created an open primary process where the top two vote-getters in the primary move on to the general election. Currently, Nevada holds partisan primaries where only registered party members can vote, essentially keeping around 28 percent of registered voters – about 413,000 people – from participating. Despite Democrats’ policy outline – called the “Nevada Blueprint” – expressly stating they would “Fight to ensure that voting is free, fair, and accessible for all eligible voters in Nevada,” Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford, D-Las Vegas, said Settelmeyer’s bill won’t get a hearing.
Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed his first bill of the 2017 legislative session Tuesday, rejecting a citizen initiative to automatically sign up people to vote when they get a driver’s license. It now goes to voters on the 2018 general election ballot. In his veto message, Sandoval said the measure “extinguishes a fundamental, individual choice — the right of eligible voters to decide for themselves whether they desire to apply to register to vote — forfeiting this basic decision to state government.”
In November, more than 1.1 million people voted in Nevada for a turnout percentage of around 77 percent, but one group was barred from participating from the beginning. Voter disenfranchisement has been a hot topic in recent years, especially as more reports show certain laws affect minorities and low-income people disproportionately. Washoe County faced a voter disenfranchisement lawsuit in 2016 when the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe successfully sued for access to polling places. Now the discussion at the Legislature has shifted to making it easier for ex-felons to vote after serving their sentences. Current Nevada law allows first-time nonviolent ex-felons to have their voting rights restored after they serve their sentence or been discharged from parole or probation. A multiple offender must go through the judicial process to have their rights restored.
Gov. Brian Sandoval issued a statement Tuesday saying he may veto Initiative Petition 1, mandating DMV register voters when they get or renew a drivers’ license. The measure has now cleared both houses of the Nevada Legislature pretty much on party line votes and is on its way to his desk where staff says he will review the measure. “Nevada has a respected election system with a high percentage of registered voters and participant rate,” the statement says. “The state also recently reached an agreement that provides that it is in compliance with the Voting Rights Act.”
The Nevada Senate on Monday approved a citizen initiative to automatically register people to vote when they conduct certain transactions at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The 12-9 vote was along party lines, with independent Sen. Patricia Farley of Las Vegas joining Democrats to approve the measure. Democratic supporters said it would increase voter rolls in Nevada and engage more people in the election process. Republican opponents countered that the registration system works fine and that the initiative could lead to voter fraud.
The parties involved in a voter discrimination lawsuit between two Native American tribes and state and county officials was settled for almost half of what the tribes’ lawyers requested, with Washoe County paying the most. The Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes won a case in federal court against Washoe and Mineral counties and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office on Oct. 7 for early polling and Election Day voting sites on the reservations. The tribes’ lawyers initially requested $117,000 in costs, but the suit was eventually settled for $60,000. Washoe County is on the hook for $25,000 with the state’s split at $20,000 and Mineral County at $15,000.
An initiative to automatically register people to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or identification card at a Department of Motor Vehicles office passed a Senate committee Wednesday on a 3-2 partisan vote. The Automatic Voter Registration Initiative, or IP1, would amend Nevada law to require the DMV to transmit information to the secretary of state and county election offices to register people who obtain, renew or change an address on a driver’s license or identification card.
The Nevada Assembly voted 27-15 Wednesday to approve a program that would automatically register people to vote when they apply for or renew a driver’s license or identification card at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Currently, residents can register to vote at the DMV but they have to “opt in” making a conscious choice to be registered. If Initiative Petition 1, or IP1 becomes law, anyone applying for a license or ID will be automatically registered and will have to choose not to be registered. Current and former members of the military testified during committee hearings that the petition would make it easier for military personnel on active duty — who move many times during their careers — to register to vote.
Should Nevadans be automatically registered to vote when they get their drivers’ licenses? That’s a question before the state Legislature this session. Right now, people can already register to vote while at the DMV, but proposals would make this process opt-out instead of opt-in. In other words, Nevadans would get their voter registrations at the same time as their licenses automatically. Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria testified before the Assembly’s Legislative Operations committee about the proposals this week. Question: Will everyone who gets a Nevada driver’s license be automatically registered to vote? What about those people who are already licensed but not registered to vote?
Adopting a proposed “motor voter” law in Nevada to register eligible people to vote when they apply for a driver’s license or other state identification card could cost as much as $5 million, state analysts said in a long overdue report released Tuesday. But state officials called the report outdated and anticipate a much lower price tag for the program, which is projected to enroll at least 120,000 voters in the first year. Under a 2016 voter-initiated petition, Nevadans would be registered to vote through the Department of Motor Vehicles unless they opt out. The petition also calls for the voter rolls to be updated when people renew driver’s licenses or otherwise update their information with the DMV. In the report filed six months late, fiscal analysts at the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau said implementing the program, should it become law, would cost $5 million if the state decided to implement a new registration database to facilitate data transfers between state and local agencies.
Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria told a state Assembly panel on Tuesday that lawmakers should consider banning guns from polling places to guard against voter intimidation. Guns are banned at some Nevada polling places, such as at schools where weapons are illegal, but other polling locations are not included in such a prohibition, Gloria told the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections. A voter could be intimidated seeing an individual carrying a weapon in a polling place, he said. No such legislation has been proposed in the 2017 session.
Amid national concerns from the president that voter fraud is rampant, a Reno assemblywoman introduced a bill requiring voter identification at the polls. Assemblywoman Lisa Krasner, R-Reno, introduced Assembly Bill 164 on Monday that would mandate voters show identification when voting. The bill also contains a provision the Department of Motor Vehicles to provide voter identification cards at no cost if a person can’t afford it. … Multiple studies show that voter fraud is not a nationwide problem. Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske has put out multiple press releases and testified in front of the Legislature that it did not occur in Nevada.
Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske told an Assembly panel on Tuesday that there’s no evidence of voter fraud in the last election, but there have been cases of voter registration fraud. Some problems came from third-party voter registration drives, and the secretary of state has requested legislation intended to address some of those shortcomings. Cegavske made her comments during a presentation Tuesday before a joint meeting of the Assembly Judiciary Committee and the Assembly Committee on Corrections, Parole, and Probation. “We don’t have any evidence that anybody illegally voted,” Cegavske told the panel.
A state senator introduced a bill on Tuesday that would open Nevada’s primaries from a partisan process to a blanket-style ballot. State Sen. James Settelmeyer, R-Minden, introduced Senate Bill 103 that would vastly change primary elections in Nevada. Currently, primaries are a partisan process with only Republicans voting on a Republican ballot and only Democrats voting on a Democratic ballot. The bill would alter that system, allowing anyone on the ballot – including minor party candidates – with the top two vote-getters moving on to the general election. Anyone regardless of political party would be able to vote in the primaries as well.
A limited recount of presidential ballots cast in Nevada confirmed the results of the Nov. 8 election and eliminated the possibility of a statewide recount, the secretary of state’s office said Thursday. The partial recount in 92 precincts, requested and paid for by independent candidate Roque “Rocky De La Fuente, “yielded no change in the number of votes cast for him,” said Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske. De La Fuente, who came in dead last in the presidential race in Nevada, said he requested the recount because he was concerned about the integrity of the vote. The recounts did result in nine fewer votes for Democrat Hillary Clinton and six fewer for Republican Donald Trump, but no other changes were identified, the Secretary of State’s Office said in a news release. De La Fuente received 2,552 votes, or 0.23 percent, in the election. Clinton won the state with 47.9 percent, beating Republican President-elect Donald Trump by nearly 2.5 percent.
A recount of ballots in select precincts from five Nevada counties sought by a last-place presidential contender will not automatically trigger a statewide recount, even if the stipulated 1 percent discrepancy is found, a state election official said Wednesday. Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, who came in dead last in Nevada with 2,552 votes in the Nov. 8 general election, filed for a recount Tuesday just minutes before the 5 p.m. deadline to do so. He paid a fee of $14,154.98 to finance the effort to recount ballots in 93 precincts, or 5 percent of the total. Under state law, if a discrepancy of 1 percent or more is found in either the votes received by the person requesting the recount or the person who won — Democrat Hillary Clinton in this case — a new counting of all ballots cast in that race can be ordered. But it is not mandatory or automatic. “State law gives the secretary of state some discretion on when a person who requests a recount is entitled to a full statewide recount,” elections deputy Wayne Thorley said. “The secretary of state will need to review the results of the sample recount of 93 precincts before making any decisions on a full statewide recount.”
After withdrawing his presidential recount petition in Wisconsin, “Rocky” Roque De La Fuente almost immediately filed for a recount in Nevada. De La Fuente was the first to file for a recount in Wisconsin but withdrew his petition when Jill Stein duplicated his effort and the estimated cost of the recount soared to more than $3.5 million. He has already posted payment for the recount in Nevada. “I’ve made this decision for a number of reasons,” said De La Fuente. “First, Wisconsin obviously made a recount cost-prohibitive for a citizen with standing. Jill (Stein) was able to tap into a Democratic base of donors to raise more than $6.2 million in just a few days, so she can afford to pursue the issue there.”
Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, an independent candidate for president who garnered less than 1 percent of the vote in Nevada, filed late Tuesday for a recount of a sample of the state’s presidential ballots. De La Fuente identified 93 precincts to be recounted and paid $14,154.98 to the secretary of state’s office ahead of the 5 p.m. deadline to cover the cost. In the November election, De La Fuente came in dead last in the presidential contest on the Nevada ballot, even trailing “None of these candidates.” He received just 2,552 votes, or 0.23 percent. Democratic contender Hillary Clinton won Nevada with 47.9 percent of the vote, beating Republican President-elect Donald Trump by a little more than 2 percent. In a statement Tuesday, De La Fuente said he ran in the Democratic presidential primary, then ran in the general election in various states as an independent and as the nominee of both the Reform Party and the American Delta Party in “an effort to champion election reform.” Under state law, the secretary of state’s office has five days to complete a recount of the precincts requested — two each in Carson City, Douglas, Mineral and Nye counties and the rest in Clark County, the state’s population hub and home to about 2 million people.
The countdown is on to see whether efforts by the left to call for recounts in this year’s presidential election actually make a difference in the final tallies. Attention continues to swirl around Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s push for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – states where Donald Trump had small margins of victory over Hillary Clinton. Some experts though question whether the same attention should be given to states Clinton won by similar margins. For comparison the latest election tally shows Clinton winning Nevada by 26,434 votes, only slightly larger than Trump’s 24 thousand vote lead in Wisconsin.
An initiative petition that would make it easier to register to vote could reach the Legislature next year after more than 125,000 signatures were turned in last week to county clerks for verification. The Automatic Voter Registration Initiative would amend state law to require the Department of Motor Vehicles to transmit information to the secretary of state’s office to register people to vote or update their information. People could opt out of the program. Right now, people can register to vote at the DMV, but they have to “opt in.”
In a sign that the legal team for the Trump campaign is aggressively laying the groundwork for potential legal challenges — big and small — lawyers have gone to state court in Nevada in an early vote dispute. They are suing Joe P. Gloria, the Clark County registrar of voters, over a decision they allege he made to keep polling locations open “two hours beyond the designated closing time.” The lawsuit targets polling places in the greater Las Vegas area that have larger minority voting precincts. Dan Kulin, a spokesperson for the county, told CNN that no early voting stations extended their closing times. They did, however, process voters who were in line at closing time to allow as many people to vote as possible. In legal briefs filed Monday night, Trump lawyers are asking for an order to have the pertinent early vote ballots not to be “co-mingled or interspersed” with other ballots.
Democrats put forward more evidence on Wednesday that they said showed that the Republican National Committee was illegally engaging in poll watching activities. The additional filing comes after an initial round of affidavits from Dem poll observers in Nevada who said they met other observers claiming to be working for the RNC earlier this week. The new filing includes the affidavits of three more Democratic poll observers who have been monitoring early voting sites in Las Vegas. They said that not only did they meet poll observers who suggested RNC involvement in elections monitoring, but that one of the GOP observers gave inaccurate information to voters, according to the court documents. The affidavits were filed in an ongoing case concerning allegations by the Democratic National Committee that the RNC had violated a decades-old consent decree limiting its ability to participate in so-called “ballot security” activities. The RNC has maintained that it has followed the decree, and filed its own court documents Wednesday that said it could find no evidence of any RNC agreements with the Donald Trump campaign to assist in Trump’s poll watcher crusade.
The Nevada State Democratic Party is suing the state Republican Party, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and others over alleged voter intimidation in Nevada and across the nation. The complaint, filed with the U.S. District Court on Sunday, alleges the Trump campaign, the Nevada Republican Party and one of Trump’s close associates, Roger Stone, and his Stop the Steal super PAC, have violated the Ku Klux Klan and Voting Rights acts through a coordinated voter intimidation campaign. Details of the lawsuit were first reported by Election Law Blog this morning. The Ku Klux Klan Act was passed by Congress in 1871, banning conspiracies to intimidate or threaten voters and stop threats and harassment of former slaves and their white supporters by the KKK. The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to stop any threats or intimidation against voters.
Concerns over voter fraud, cyber breaches and voter intimidate loom as Nevada voters prepare to participate in early voting starting Saturday. More than 60 percent of Nevada voters will cast their ballots early. Elections officials say they are confident and ready to protect the integrity of the voting process. In Clark County, there are roughly 4,900 electronic voting machines and 97 early voting locations set up throughout the county. Joe Gloria is the registrar of Clark County Voters and maintains that the voting system is secure. Concerns over voter fraud have been fueled through accusations by Donald Trump in recent days despite multiple reports disputing his claims. “Voter fraud is all too common and then they criticize us for saying that,” Trump said to a group of supporters recently.
The Justice Department sided with two Nevada tribes’ interpretation of a key part of the U.S. Voting Rights Act and a judge said she will issue a ruling Friday in the native Paitues’ legal battle with state and county officials over minority access to the polls. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du listened to arguments during a daylong hearing Tuesday in Reno on whether to grant the tribes’ request for an emergency order establishing satellite voting sites on their Pyramid Lake and Walker River reservations in northern Nevada’s high desert. The tribes accuse Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Washoe and Mineral counties of illegally denying tribe members voting access afforded to people in wealthier, mostly white neighborhoods. Members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe living in Washoe County say they must travel 96 miles roundtrip to register to vote or to cast ballots in person in Sparks. Members of the Walker River Paiute Tribe in rural Mineral County say they have to go 70 miles roundtrip to Hawthorne. The lawsuit says that’s nearly twice as far as voters on Lake Tahoe’s affluent north shore would have to travel to vote if the county had not set up a satellite poll in upscale Incline Village.
Two Native American tribes in Nevada have won an emergency court order in a federal lawsuit accusing the Republican secretary of state and two counties of discriminating against them under the Voting Rights Act. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du issued a temporary injunction in Reno late Friday requiring the establishment of satellite polling places on two northern Nevada reservations ahead of next month’s election in the Western battleground state. The Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute (PY’-ewt) tribes say their members are being denied equal access to the polls as a result of the long distances some must travel to vote early or cast ballots on Election Day.
A federal judge on Friday found partially in favor of two Native American tribes in their lawsuit against the Secretary of State’s Office and two Nevada counties in a voter disenfranchisement case. Federal Judge Miranda Du released her ruling late Friday afternoon which found in favor of the Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes’ request for early in-person polling in Nixon and Schurz and Election Day in-person polling at Nixon. She denied the request for satellite voter registration sites in both places. “In this case, while injunctive relief would impose costs upon defendants, there is no indication it would interfere with the state’s ability to move forward with the November election as scheduled,” Du said in the ruling. “The public interest is served by the enforcement of the (Voting Rights Act of 1965) and the inclusion of protected classes in the political process.”
A federal judge said she will rule on an emergency injunction regarding a federal lawsuit by two Native American tribes alleging voter disenfranchisement by two Nevada counties and the secretary of state’s office. U.S. District Judge Miranda Du heard a full day of arguments and testimony on Tuesday from the Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes requesting satellite voter registration, early polling places and Election Day voter sites from Washoe and Mineral counties. The tribes made the requests in August, which the counties denied. They filed suit in early September, alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Native Americans are considered a protected group under the act. The counties denied any discrimination is taking place and state the reason for denial is logistics and cost.