Nevada
Ballot Security
What Politicians Say
The state’s elections could soon be run by a former state assemblyman who claims the 2020 election was “stolen” from him and Donald Trump.
After losing a congressional race by by 5 points, Republican Secretary of State nominee Jim Marchant filed an extremely unusual lawsuit demanding a new election, which a judge swiftly dismissed.
Marchant, who would oversee the state agency that certifies voting machines if he wins, has said that an unidentified global “cabal” is manipulating voting machines.
He has pledged to implement voter ID, end no-excuse vote by mail and early in-person voting, loosen restrictions on partisan poll watchers, aggressively remove voters from the rolls and hand count all ballots, a method that is more expensive, slower and less accurate.
Ease of Voting
After experimenting with mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, Nevada adopted it permanently and is now one of eight states that hold elections entirely by mail.
Another 2021 law expanded the state’s automatic voter registration system so that eligible Nevada residents who interact with several state and tribal agencies are automatically signed up to vote.
Ballot Security
After the 2022 election, Nevada will hold a pilot program for a risk-limiting audit, in which a random sample of paper ballots is manually checked in a public forum.
A 2021 law allows disabled voters to return ballots electronically, which the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says is “fundamentally insecure.”
How Politicians Responded to the 2020 Election
Adam Laxalt, the Republican nominee for US senator, has said “there’s no question” that the 2020 election was “rigged.”
A former Nevada attorney general and co-chair of Donald Trump’s campaign in the state in 2020, Laxalt filed several lawsuits seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s win in 2020.
As part of those efforts, he submitted a list of thousands of out-of-state voters he claimed voted illegally in Nevada. Many of them turned out to be members of the military who are legally allowed to cast a Nevada ballot.
Laxalt has declined to say whether he would vote to overturn the next presidential election if elected and said that he would file lawsuits to contest his own race if he loses in November.
April Becker, the Republican nominee for a US House seat, has avoided answering questions about whether Biden won the 2020 election legitimately.
After losing a state Senate race in 2020, Becker sued to have the election overturned.
In dismissing the case, a judge wrote that Becker “put forth no evidence that any discrepancies in Senate District 6 would affect the outcome” and did not cite any law that would give him the power to invalidate an election.