Since 2022, Governor Joe Lombardo and many Nevadans have been advocating a return to absentee ballots.
This is where a registered voter requests a paper ballot be mailed under certain circumstances only. Some call it an “Opt In” approach. Reasons can be military service, illness, confinement, or a short-term job assignment outside of your resident state.
Currently, however, every active registered voter in Nevada is mailed a paper ballot during the presidential primaries, the state level primaries and the general elections.
The only way to prevent this from happening is for the individual voter to “Opt Out” – which requires filling out a form and mailing it to the elections department or going online.
Why do some legislators advocate for universal mail ballots?
In 2020 during the COVID emergency, mail ballots were sent to everyone. That might have made sense.
Then, in August 2021, during a special legislative session, the Nevada Legislature passed AB321 to usher in universal mail ballots. This meant that every Active registered voter was to receive a mail ballot as early as 4 weeks before Election Day.
Since then, many have claimed that mail ballots increase voter access.
They claim it is convenient and increases turnout. Therefore, more citizens can “participate in Democracy.”
Let’s take a look at turnout from the Secretary of State’s website.
We list Clark and Washoe counties, plus the sum of 15 remaining counties, which we called the “Rurals”. We also separate Presidential Election years and Non-Presidential years.
As you can see, the overall turnout for 2022 and 2024 was down!
Those numbers tell us that turnout is NOT increased with Universal Mail Ballots. In fact, the two General Elections (2022 and 2024) where Universal Mail Ballots were used turnout was dismal. In both elections turnout was the eighth worst in the last 10 elections.
How much does it cost the Nevada taxpayers?
We went back and looked at the fiscal notes that were submitted in 2021 with AB321.
In 2021, Nevada budgeted $23 million dollars.
When adjusted for inflation and population growth we estimate the cost amounted to ~$25.1 million last year. It is fiscal mismanagement to spend that kind of money for no apparent reason.
In the 2022 Primary Election 87.59% of the mail ballots were not used and in the General Election 71.98% were not used, money flushed down the drain.
In 2024, that number was 87.58% for the primary and 66.94% for the general election.
To put a number on it, in the 2024 General Election, 1,355,273 mail ballots were mailed that were never used, a gross misuse of taxpayer money
As a reference point, in the 2018 General Election, Nevada voters returned 87,658 absentee ballots.
It is therefore fair to assume that our elections costs ballooned significantly after 2018.
More reasons to return to “Opt In” absentee ballots.
- Hundreds of thousands of mail ballots are sent to people who don’t belong on the voter rolls: people who moved to another state, people who are deceased, people who are not citizens aren’t asked for proof of citizenship, errors in the data records such as duplicate registrations, and more.
- We have 21,234 people in Clark County who registered over 10+ years ago and who have never voted (yes, a decade or more). They receive mail ballots for every election.
- Voter cleanup processes are only done a few times per year, due to loopholes in the federal and state statutes. It is also partly due to the election departments not having dedicated staffs to maintain voter rolls constantly, so it becomes a secondary priority by default.
- Mail ballots are not water marked or trackable, so easily duplicated. In 2024 there were instances where some people received two exact copies of the same mail ballot.
- Once a mail ballot is in the US Post Office, we lose visibility to the chain-of-custody. Poll Observers are not allowed to go inside the USPS processing centers.
- Most if not all printing, mailing, and verifying signatures of returned mail ballots is done by third parties like Runbeck and others. There are no Poll Observers present when these third parties operate their systems.
In conclusion…
While President Trump’s executive order on elections will bring order to some of these statutes, processes and systems, we urge Legislators to look at the facts and return to absentee ballots and do away with Universal Mail Ballots.
These commonsense changes need to be made in time for the 2026 elections.
Voters support it.
Taxpayers support it.
It would alleviate a lot of unproductive work that our election workers are burdened with.
And most of all, it is the responsible and commonsense thing to do!
