The Nevada Secretary of State is facing a lawsuit over an alleged failure to maintain accurate and up-to-date voter rolls, undermining voter confidence.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Nevada GOP have sued the Nevada Secretary of State, accusing the state’s top elections official of undermining voter confidence by failing to follow federal law on the proper maintenance of voter rolls.
The RNC filed its complaint on March 19 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, accusing Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar of failing to keep voter rolls accurate, in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
“Election integrity starts with clean voter rolls, and that’s why the National Voter Registration Act requires state officials to keep their rolls accurate and up-to-date,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.
‘Easier to Vote and Harder to Cheat’
The NVRA requires that states maintain accurate and current voter registration rolls for federal elections. But the RNC said in its complaint that a half dozen Nevada counties have implausible voter registration rates.
“At least three Nevada counties have more registered voters than they have adult citizens who are over the age of 18,” the complaint reads. “That number of voters is impossibly high.”
The three Nevada counties in question are Douglas (104 percent), Lyon (105 percent), and Storey (113 percent).
Another two Nevada counties have voter registration rates in excess of 90 percent of adult citizens over the age of 18: Carson City (92 percent) and Clark (91 percent).
“That figure far eclipses the national and statewide voter registration rate in recent elections,” the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint.
U.S. Census data released in May 2023 shows that the national voter registration rate for the 2022 Congressional election was 69.1 percent—the highest for a midterm election since 2000.
Nevada’s statewide voter registration rates for the 2022 and the 2020 elections were 65.1 percent and 66.2 percent of the voting-age citizen population, per the complaint.
Additionally, several Nevada counties have unusually high rates of inactive registrants: Elko (31 percent), Eureka (23 percent), Humboldt (26 percent), Lincoln (25 percent,), Mineral (30 percent), Nye (31 percent), Washoe (17 percent), and White Pine (23 percent).
By Tom Ozimek
