(Chuck Muth) – Two days ago, The Federalist published an in-depth report on the condition of Nevada’s voter files, including the following…
“Hundreds of questionable addresses remain on Nevada’s voter rolls, and elections officials appear to be doing nothing to clean up the list.”
The report is based on an investigatory video produced by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) which showed, without doubt, that there are voters on Nevada’s voter rolls who do not live at the address where they are registered.
And while the focus of the PILF investigation was on voters registered at commercial addresses – including a Las Vegas “nudie” bar – there are actually tens of thousands of voters on Nevada’s voter rolls who no longer live where they’re registered.
Dan Burdish – our brilliant number-cruncher and data analyst for the Pigpen Project – shot me the current breakdown of the full list of voters in Nevada who, according to the National Change of Address (NCOA) database, have moved from where they’re registered…
That’s a massive number – especially when you consider Nevada’s U.S. Senate race in 2022 was decided by fewer than 8,000 votes.
To be clear, I am NOT saying any fraud was committed; only that the POTENTIAL for fraud was higher because of ballots being mailed to voters who no longer live where the ballot was sent. Not to mention the tax dollars wasted to mail those ballots.
Anyway, this week we started tackling the problem using data research rather than “boots on the ground” by submitting “MRV’s” to ten of Nevada’s 17 county clerks/registrars. MRV stands for “Moved, Registered, Voted” – meaning they’ve moved out of Nevada, re-registered in another state, and have voted in the other state.
Low-hanging fruit.
Using technology, this can quickly and easily be verified – and those MRV’s should have their registrations in Nevada cancelled completely, not merely moved from “active” to “inactive.”
And it’s important to note that it’s not accurate to say election officials are doing “nothing to clean up the list.” What would be more accurate to say is they’re doing the bare minimum to comply with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
Again, using technology and the NCOA data from the post office, we could clean these lists much better and much faster. But there’s nothing in law REQUIRING county election officials to use this technology and data.
We’re hoping the list maintenance work the Pigpen Project is doing to assist election officials in this effort will be embraced and implemented. As Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said this week…
“The Secretary of State’s office, at the bottom line, is a technology company. We use technology to drive corporate and business filings. We use technology to do our securities investigations. It’s also using technology in the election space to increase accuracy, and making sure we’re doing what we need to do and giving the voter that best experience to have trust in the system.”
Lastly, a few people have emailed asking me about dead voters.
Yes, while I haven’t written a lot about our efforts in that regard, we have an absolutely fantastic volunteer, Deb Lara, who uses new data technology to identify deceased voters who, for various reasons, have somehow been missed for removal from the voter rolls.
And I’m not talking about recently deceased. We’re finding people who died two, five, ten years or more ago.
Again, we’re not just relying on data.
Deb researches suspected deaths and finds official obituaries. She then takes a screen shot of the obituary and submits it along with the “Deceased Voter Form” provided by the county. This helps election officials confirm the report.
Since Deb began this aspect of the project for us earlier this year, I believe she’s found and reported over 1,000 “dead voters” to be removed completely from the voter files. And that was only in Clark County. She’s now expanding statewide.
Ain’t no moss growing under our feet!
In closing…
I know you get hit up to support a lot of good causes on an almost daily basis, but want you to know your support of the Pigpen Project is really making a difference in protecting our elections – though there’s still a LOT of work to be done.
So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
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.