(Chuck Muth) – Like the rest of you, we were caught flat-footed this week by Clark County mailing over one million postcards seeking to verify and update voter signatures for their files.
Since signatures for some voters do change significantly over time, it wasn’t a bad idea…theoretically. However, the execution was flawed.
Voters should have been advised the cards were coming via a media announcement BEFORE they hit. That would have alleviated a lot of the initial concerns about whether the cards were legitimate or not – especially since they ask for driver’s license and Social Security information.
It would have been far better if the cards could have been returned in a sealed envelope rather than on a folded postcard secured only by a couple pieces of tape. Worries about potential identity theft were absolutely legitimate.
As Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Victor Joecks noted on Thursday…
“Unfortunately, this signature update provides a new opportunity for fraud. If someone obtained another person’s signature update form, they could return it and put their version of the signature on file. This could happen at an apartment complex where people frequently move.
“If the voter rolls were perfect, this would be less of a concern. But the Pigpen Project, a group doing great working to improve Nevada’s voter rolls, has unearthed mounds of evidence that they aren’t. People move and don’t bother to update their voter registration. Even if they vote in a new state, their Nevada registration may not be canceled.”
My biggest problem with this is the cost, especially since I’m guessing the vast majority of people will choose NOT to send the postcards back. And if the cost of printing and mailing the postcards only cost 50-cents each, we’re looking at a taxpayer price tag of over $500,000.
In my opinion, that money would have been better spent hiring one or two full-time employees dedicated to doing the same work we’ve been doing at the Pigpen Project so we wouldn’t have to.
On another subject, the Nevada Secretary of State announced today that the new Voter Registration and Election Management System (VREMS) is now implemented throughout all of Nevada's 17 counties.
“Under the new system,” writes LVRJ reporter Jessica Hill, “counties and the state will be connected together, moving the state from its ‘bottom-up’ voter registration systems that required the state to put together separate files from each county into a statewide voter registration file.”
“Instead of having 17 different systems doing list maintenance for our voter rolls,” noted Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, “we have a single system now that allows us to directly manage that information and have a streamlined, unified process across the state for list maintenance.”
The new system, Aguilar said, should better protect our elections from people who might try to vote twice – either in two different counties or by trying to vote by both mail and in-person.
We’re not sure how this will affect the work at the Pigpen Project. I sent the Secretary of State’s office an email this morning asking whether we should now submit our list maintenance reports to the SOS or continue to submit them to each individual county.
We’ll proceed as advised as soon as we’re notified. Onward…
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“County elections officials told lawmakers on Thursday that the new (VREMS) system will allow for greater oversight of voter activity and more election transparency. ‘It's one system, so a voter cannot go to Washoe County, and then two days later go to Clark County and try to vote. We'll catch those,’ interim Washoe County Registrar Cari-Ann Burgess said.” – Nevada Independent, 2/22/24
The Pigpen Project is a project of Citizen Outreach Foundation, an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) grassroots organization founded in 1992. Donations are tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes.