(Chuck Muth) – If anyone isn’t sure that Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is intentionally trying to thwart efforts to clean up Nevada’s dirty voter rolls, his new bill, AB534, removes all doubt.
There are two ways for citizens to challenge the eligibility of a voter who has moved from the residence where they are registered to vote – known as “Section 535” and “Section 547.”
Last year, our Pigpen Project filed thousands of challenges using both sections. They were all blocked by Aguilar who claimed the challenges lacked “personal knowledge” that the voter had moved.
If the post office’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database shows that a voter had permanently moved, Aguilar has declared that such information gleaned from this official government database doesn’t equate to “personal knowledge” – which is neither defined in statute nor required for Section 535 challenges.
Indeed, if a Pigpen volunteer went to a suspected “moved” voter’s address, and the current resident confirmed that the voter had moved and no longer lived there, Aguilar maintains that that STILL doesn’t amount to personal knowledge.
He says that’s “hearsay evidence.”
Again, Aguilar’s personal definition of personal knowledge is NOT defined in Nevada Revised Statutes (NRS). It’s only his, and Attorney General Aaron Ford’s opinion, which is NOT backed up by law.
And they both know it and know they’re on shaky ground.
COVERING THEIR ARSE
So Aguilar has included in his massive, omnibus election reform bill new language to cement his definition of “personal knowledge” in NRS. Here’s the proposed language…
“For the purposes of this section, ‘personal knowledge’ means firsthand knowledge through experience or observation of the facts upon each ground that the challenge is based. The term does not include knowledge obtained from a third party, including, without limitation, information obtained from the review of data in a database or other compilation of information.”
Oh, come on.
Common sense says that if the current resident says the voter no longer lives there, that should be enough to trigger the issuance by election officials of the postcard (as per state law) to the moved voter requesting confirmation that they still live where they’re registered.
And if they don’t confirm that they still live there within 30 days of mailing them the postcard, then the voter is shifted from “Active” status to “Inactive” status – meaning they won’t automatically be mailed a ballot.
For whatever reason(s), Aguilar apparently WANTS those voters to remain on the voter rolls as Active and receive an automatic mail-in ballot. There’s no other reason for putting into law a prohibition on using information from a “third party” – including the current resident.
Ditto his effort to cement into law a prohibition on citizens using the NCOA database, compiled by the United States Postal Service, to identify voters who told the post office that they’d moved permanently from the address where they are registered – which is what the Pigpen Project has been using to flag suspected moved voters.
Now get a load of this. Here’s what current law says…
NRS 293.5303: “(T)he county clerk in each county may enter into an agreement with the United States Postal Service or any person authorized by it to obtain the data compiled by the United States Postal Service concerning changes of addresses of its postal patrons for use by the county clerk to correct the portions of the statewide voter registration list relevant to the county clerk.”
NRS 293.5307: “If a county clerk enters into an agreement pursuant to NRS 293.5303, the county clerk shall review each notice of a change of address filed with the United States Postal Service by a resident of the county and identify each resident who is a registered voter and has moved to a new address.
“Before removing or correcting information in the statewide voter registration list, the county clerk shall mail a notice to each such registered voter and follow the procedures set forth in NRS 293.530.”
Now let’s make sure everyone understands the insanity behind Aguilar’s position on this.
By law, the county clerks “may” – but are not required to – use the NCOA database for the purpose of cleaning up Nevada’s dirty voter rolls.
In other words, our government overlords are allowed to use the exact same database the Pigpen Project has been using to identify moved voters. But we, the great unwashed, can’t.
Now, if the county clerks were doing so, this wouldn’t be such a big deal, and the voter rolls wouldn’t be so dirty.
But the clerks – for various reasons – have chosen NOT to use the NCOA database, as allowed by law, to clean the voter files, and the law doesn’t require that they do.
So the Pigpen Project has been trying to help them do it…only to have Aguilar tell us to shove it up our keisters. And now he wants to put his obstruction into law!
Why? Obviously, because he doesn’t want the voter rolls cleaned up – by us OR the county clerks. It’s as simple as that.
HANG ON, IT GETS WORSE
Aguilar is now hiding behind “personal knowledge” as an excuse not to investigate voters who the NCOA database says have permanently moved AND YET somehow still voted last November BY MAIL.
Now, understand that ballots are NOT supposed to be forwarded to a voter by the post office if they’ve moved. Which means it’s highly likely that somebody other than the voter got hold of the voter’s mail-in ballot and illegally voted it.
Pigpen Project director Iris Stone has submitted 881 Election Integrity Violation Reports (EIVR) on such suspicious votes over the past few weeks.
But Aguilar has since REJECTED them, claiming they were submitted without “personal knowledge” – even though such a requirement to file an EIVR is NOT in statute.
Bottom line: If someone other than the moved voter voted with the moved voter’s mail-in ballot . . . THAT’S ELECTION FRAUD!
And Aguilar refuses to investigate it. Meaning Nevada’s elections – despite his claims to the contrary – are NOT secure.
Challenges and EIVRs are the only way for citizens to protect their vote from being cancelled out by someone else voting illegally. And Aguilar’s AB534 would eliminate it.
Elections are for the citizens of Nevada, not for the convenience of election officials like Aguilar who want to keep mailing ballots to people who no longer live where they’re registered…or even live in our state any longer.
This is such a critically important protection that legislators should either remove it from the bill or vote against it.
And if the Democrat majority passes the bill with this provision in it, I hope Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoes it.
