The Nevada Assembly just passed AB534, a sweeping election reform bill backed by Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.
And if you care about clean elections, taxpayer money, and basic fairness – you should be very concerned.
This bill does a whole lot of things. But the worst part?
It makes it almost impossible for citizens to challenge bad voter registrations – even if you know someone moved away or doesn’t live where they’re registered anymore.
The heart of the issue is a new definition for “personal knowledge.”
If this bill becomes law, the only way to file a voter challenge is if you yourself have “firsthand” knowledge that someone moved.
That means:
- You can’t rely on U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records.
- You can’t report what the current resident of the home told you.
- You can’t use data, property records, or even public social media posts.
In other words, if your neighbor tells you the person on your precinct walk list hasn’t lived there in years – that’s now considered hearsay. And the challenge will get thrown out.
Meanwhile, thousands of ballots keep getting mailed to people who don’t live there anymore.
That’s a waste of money and opens the door for mischief.
Under current law, all “active” voters get mailed a ballot – unless they opt out.
But because voter rolls are filled with people who’ve moved, many of those ballots go to bad addresses. Some pile up in apartment mail rooms. Some end up in the trash.
Others? Who knows.
Taxpayers foot the bill for every one of those ballots – printing, postage, and processing.
And it’s all completely avoidable if officials would just clean up the rolls.
But AB534 blocks citizen-led efforts to help do exactly that.
Volunteers for Citizen Outreach’s Pigpen Project found hundreds of voters in just one Nevada Senate district who were still registered at addresses where they no longer live – including dozens who moved out of state.
These aren’t guesses. They’re based on highly reliable data from the U.S. Postal Service and property records.
Yet if this bill passes the Senate, that information won’t be allowed as evidence.
Let that sink in.
The bill also includes four unfunded mandates on counties.
That means new election rules – like tighter deadlines to count ballots, and costly audits – will have to be carried out without any state funding.
The fiscal note confirms it: Legislative Counsel Bureau Fiscal Note #14494 says the bill “may have fiscal impact” on local governments.
Translation: counties will pay more, or cut corners, or raise taxes.
Is that what Nevadans need? Higher costs and fewer safeguards?
In addition, what’s not in AB534 is just as troubling:
- No new voter ID requirements.
- No requirement to cross-check voter rolls with federal change-of-address databases.
- No help for counties to work with trusted third parties to clean up their rolls.
So instead of making our elections more secure, this bill makes it harder to fix known problems – and does nothing to stop ineligible voters from receiving ballots.
The bill also renames “provisional ballots” to “conditional ballots.”
That’s like calling a broken toaster a “warming device.” It doesn’t solve anything. It’s just a PR move to make people feel better about a flawed process.
Backers of the bill – all Democrats, including the Secretary of State – claim AB534 will improve access to the ballot. And yes, some parts of the bill make voting more convenient.
But convenience without security isn’t fair – not to the voters who play by the rules, and not to the taxpayers who keep paying for a broken system.
When you send ballots to people who no longer live here, and then make it impossible for anyone to challenge it, that’s not protecting democracy. That’s rigging the system in plain sight.
Nevada’s current law already lets election officials clean up the rolls. If they simply followed the National Voter Registration Act and used available data – including from the U.S. Postal Service – we could weed out ineligible voters fairly and legally.
But instead, this bill locks in an outdated and narrow standard that blocks voters, candidates, and election watchdogs from doing their part to keep the rolls clean.
Unless the Senate strips out the harmful “personal knowledge” definition and adds real voter roll cleanup tools, AB534 should be rejected outright.
Our elections should be safe, fair, and secure. This bill moves us in the wrong direction.
