(Chuck Muth) – Washoe County Registrar of Voters (ROV) Andrew McDonald was interviewed by host Randi Thompson on Nevada Newsmakers last week and declared:
“I have full trust and transparency in our voting system.”
Well, that makes one of us.
His statement echoes what Nevada Secretary of State (SOS) Cisco Aguilar declared in a press release dated February 5, 2024:
“Nevada runs some of the most secure, accessible and transparent elections in the country, and we're dedicated to ensuring voters are confident in that.”
I’m not confident at all…and you shouldn’t be either.
Because as Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch warned, “When you have dirty voting rolls, you can have dirty elections.”
And Washoe’s voting rolls still need some industrial strength Tide to clean them up.
When “Transparency” Means Hiding the Truth
In the interview with Mr. McDonald, Ms. Thompson brought up Citizen Outreach’s Pigpen Project to clean up the voter rolls and our ongoing battles with SOS Aguilar, who has been blocking our efforts.
“But you have the ability to clean up the voter rolls yourself, correct?” she asked.
Let the dissembling begin.
“We do, and we do daily list maintenance, uh, that people may not know of. If you move out of Washoe County to, let’s say California, you, as a voter, should be contacting us saying, hey, can you please cancel my voter registration.
“And if you don’t do that, that’s gonna – that voter roll is going to stay on the rolls for some time until we can get to you and inactivate you slash cancel you. But we also do bulk list maintenance in off years. And that’s what we’re working on right now.”
Problem #1: Many voters who move out of Nevada forget to cancel their Nevada registration. Blaming the voter is no excuse not to clean up the voter rolls when you’re advised that the voter has moved.
Problem #2: The “bulk list maintenance” process, which relies on the post office returning election mail to the election department, regularly misses a ton of voters who have moved but whose mail isn’t returned by the post office for a variety of reasons.
Mr. McDonald continued:
“All those things about transparency I think are paramount to ensuring that voters believe and trust in our elections. That is what’s important to me and that’s what’s important to the voters, but also our staff.”
If only that were true.
And THIS is the problem I have with Secretary Aguilar and some other election officials in the state. They don’t tell the whole story and they’re not being fully transparent.
How the System Misses Thousands Who Moved Away
Yes, they may be doing daily list maintenance. Yes, they may be doing “bulk” clean-up.
But the system they’re using for these efforts still has holes in it – holes which the Pigpen Project has identified to find voters who have moved out of state that the ROV’s process missed.
As such, Secretary Aguilar and Mr. McDonald are giving voters a false sense of security.
And I’ll give you an example right out of Washoe County from just last week to demonstrate why no voter in Nevada should “believe and trust in our elections.”
On September 1, 2025, Dan Burdish, the Pigpen Project’s expert chief data analyst, pulled the list of all the people who filed a change of address with the United States Postal Service (USPS) – an official government database used by election officials – after the November 2024 general election.
He then pulled the list of Active registered voters as of September 1, 2025, from the Secretary of State’s official voter registration list and matched them to generate a list of Active registered voters in Nevada who have officially told the post office that they’ve moved out of state.
That alone tells us the voter rolls still aren’t clean even after they’ve done their daily and bulk list maintenance.
But hold on. We went a step further.
25 Voters, Two States, One Bureaucratic Shrug
Mr. Burdish then ran his list against the official voter registration list in Florida where he lives and has access to the data.
And he found 25 from Washoe County who filed an official change of address with the post office in the last year…
AND remain on Nevada’s Active voter file…
AND have RE-REGISTERED to vote in Florida!
So he submitted official “Section 535” challenges – NOT Section 547 challenges, which is important and I’ll get to in a minute – to the registrations of those 25 voters to the Washoe County Registrar’s office.
Last week, every one of them was summarily rejected by the ROV without even bothering to check and verify our information.
On October 16, 2025, George Guthrie, Media Production Specialist for the Washoe ROV, wrote to Mr. Burdish…
“Upon review, the submitted 25 challenges fail to satisfy the statutory requirements laid out within NRS 293.535 and are therefore rejected without further consideration.”
Why a “Media Production Specialist” is handling voter challenges is an issue for another day.
Mr. Burdish then followed up by asking: “Please provide specific reasons for the Washoe Register of Voters rejecting these challenges.”
Mr. Guthrie responded…
“Among other things, NRS 293.535 requires the challenger to state that the registered voter they are challenging moved outside the county with the intention of remaining there for an indefinite time and with the intention of abandoning his or her residence in the county where registered. The challenges submitted do not include such a statement based on personal knowledge.”
Uh-oh. There’s that “personal knowledge” crud again. But it doesn’t hold water. So stick with me.
When “Personal Knowledge” Becomes Political Cover
Mr. Burdish responded:
“You statement ‘Among other things’ implies there are additional reasons the challenges were rejected. Please let us know all reasons the ‘challenges fail to satisfy the statutory requirements laid out within NRS 293.535.’”
Mr. Guthrie replied:
“I was referring to the numerous statements a challenger must make to comply with NRS 293.535(1)(b)(1-2). I’ll once again affirm the challenges were rejected for lacking a personal knowledge-based statement of those facts. This alone warranted rejection of the 25 submitted challenges.
“If you’d like, I’d be happy to forward along the guidance on personal knowledge provided to us by the Secretary of State’s office. Other than that, I don’t have anything further to disclose.”
To which Mr. Burdish responded:
“Thank you, I would appreciate it if you would forward the guidance from the Secretary of State.”
Which Mr. Guthrie did. So let’s unpack all this.
Aguilar’s Memo: When Bureaucrats Start Playing Word Games with the Law
Mr. Guthrie argued that Mr. Burdish’s challenges “were rejected for lacking a personal knowledge-based statement of (the) facts.” And this is critical, as I’ll explain in a minute.
But Mr. Burdish’s challenges DID include such a statement. Here’s the statement of facts that was included, with the names and addresses redacted:
“(Redacted name) registered to vote at (redacted address) in (Florida) County, on 4/11/2025 superseding their registration in Nevada.”
Indeed, NRS 293.493 specifically states:
“If a person removes to another state, territory or foreign country, with the intention of establishing his or her domicile there, the person thereby loses his or her residence in this State.”
This isn’t complicated.
If a person registers to vote in another state, it is considered prima facie evidence (legal presumption) of an intention to abandon Nevada residency for voting. This creates a strong presumption that the individual intends to be a resident and voter elsewhere.
Which brings us to NRS 293.495:
“If a person…removes to another state, territory or foreign country, the intent to abandon his or her residence in this State shall be presumed, and the burden shall be upon the person to prove the contrary.”
“The burden shall be upon the person to prove the contrary.” Not the challenger. The challenged.
Which brings us to NRS 293.500:
“If a person removes to another state, territory or foreign country, with the intention of residing there for an indefinite time, the person thereby loses his or her residence in this State for election purposes, notwithstanding that the person may intend to return at some uncertain future date. A person’s occasional return to the place of his or her former residence in this State, regardless of the reason, is not sufficient to preserve his or her residence.”
The 25 Nevada Active voters we challenged filed an official change of address with the post office AND re-registered to vote in Florida. By law, they are presumed to have abandoned their “residence in this State (Nevada) for election purposes.”
As such, the law requires the ROV to mail a notice to the voter at the address where they are registered to confirm whether or not they have moved.
Seriously, this isn’t complicated. It’s right there in black and white.
Now let’s get to the real crux of the matter.
How Aguilar Redefined “Personal Knowledge” to Kill Challenges
Remember, Mr. Guthrie alleged that Mr. Burdish failed to provide “a personal knowledge-based statement of those facts.”
Not true. Not even close.
Mr. Burdish’s challenges all included the following statement:
“By signing my name below, as per NRS 293.535, I certify under penalty of perjury that I have ‘personal knowledge of the facts set forth’ in this affidavit and the information provided is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.”
And yes, he signed each challenge.
Which brings us to “the guidance on personal knowledge provided to (the ROV) by the Secretary of State’s office.”
That memorandum to Nevada’s County Clerks and Registrars from Secretary Aguilar, dated October 4, 2024, states that “the challenger must state that they have ‘personal knowledge’ of the facts alleged.”
Which Mr. Burdish did.
Now here’s where Secretary Aguilar goes down Alice’s rabbit hole in an effort to make the words in the statute mean whatever he wants them to mean.
There are two options a citizen has to challenge a voter’s registration: Section 547 and Section 535.
Section 547 requires that the challenge be “based on the personal knowledge of the registered voter.”
But a Section 535 challenge only requires the challenger to “state that he or she has personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavit.”
Which Mr. Burdish did.
And here’s where Secretary Aguilar, in his memorandum, tries to play Humpty Dumpty.
“While ‘personal knowledge’ is not explicitly defined under NRS 293.535 or implementing regulations, the Secretary views the term to mean the same thing in both statutes.”
No, no, NO!
They do NOT mean the same thing.
Section 535 specifically requires only that Mr. Burdish have “personal knowledge” of the FACTS – which he does and so stated – not of the VOTER.
And he didn’t use any “unreliable” third-party data to uncover his facts.
He used official government sources – the post office’s official change of address database and the official voter registration databases from Nevada and Florida – which are the exact same databases the ROV is allowed to use for the same purpose.
Aguilar’s Marching Orders: Reject First, Ask Questions Never
Nevertheless, Secretary Aguilar instructed the county election officials “who receive these challenges (to) reject them.”
And Mr. Guthrie – the ROV’s Media Production Specialist, not an election law specialist – is hiding behind Secretary Aguilar’s “words mean what I choose them to mean” memorandum to reject Mr. Burdish’s properly-filed, fully researched, and well-documented challenges of voters who have moved to Florida AND re-registered to vote there.
Which, by the way, Mr. Guthrie is not lawfully allowed to do.
Indeed, Section 535 is quite clear that upon receiving a challenge,
“…the county clerk shall notify the registrant in the manner set forth in NRS 293.530 and shall enclose a copy of the affidavit. If the registrant fails to respond or appear to vote within the required time, the county clerk shall cancel the registration.”
“Shall,” not “may.” And as Mr. Burdish notes:
“NRS 293.535 does not have provisions for the county clerk/registrar to determine whether the affiant does or does not meet the requirements for submitting the challenge. It is unambiguous. It requires certain acts if a registrant is challenged and if the ‘affiant’ (challenger) states that ‘he or she has personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavit.’
“Those requirements were met. If a county clerk/registrar, or the Nevada Secretary of State, believes the challenger does not meet the requirements set forth in NRS 293.535 it is incumbent on them to challenge the affidavit in court.”
Which Mr. Guthrie hasn’t done.
Instead, he’s summarily rejected Mr. Burdish’s challenges out of hand and is hiding behind Secretary Aguilar’s memorandum to skirt the law.
All of which brings us back to where we started.
Until the Law Is Followed, Nevada’s Elections Can’t Be Trusted
When you have dirty voting rolls, you can have dirty elections.
Washoe County’s voter rolls continue to be dirty.
And the Washoe County ROV refuses to clean them.
As such, there is absolutely NO REASON WHATSOVER to have full trust in our voting system – in Washoe or any other county that refuses to process the Pigpen Project’s duly filed challenges of voters who no longer live where they’re registered.
No matter what Mr. McDonald, Mr. Guthrie, or Secretary Aguilar say to the contrary.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Mass vote by mail requires highly accurate voter rolls. Otherwise, ballots end up at the wrong addresses, and some people are even sent multiple ballots under slightly different versions of their name.” – J. Christian Adams, president, Public Interest Legal Foundation
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.