Washoe Voter File Clean-Up Numbers Raise Questions

(Chuck Muth) – Here are some excerpts from reporter Mark Robison’s story today in the Reno Gazette-Journal on efforts to clean up the voter rolls in Washoe County…

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The number of Washoe County registered voters plunged by about 6,800 in July, largely due to efforts to clean up voter rolls.

This was largely attributed to 25,000 notification cards sent to registered voters whose primary ballots in June were returned as undeliverable, county elections spokesperson George Guthrie told the Reno Gazette Journal.

On June 26, Washoe County reported sending out more than 58,000 postcards to voters – 25,021 were for undeliverable ballots.

In Washoe County, active registered Democrats dropped by 1,953 in July while Republicans dropped by 1,682.  The county’s largest decrease came from nonpartisans, whose active rolls went down by 2,469.

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To read the full article, click here.

While this is welcome news, it raises some serious questions…

1.)  If they mailed 25,000 verification postcards to voters “whose primary ballots in June were returned as undeliverable,” how did they only remove 6,800?  I mean, how did the other 18,200 get the postcards if their ballots had previously been returned as “undeliverable”?

2.)  If verification postcards were sent to a total of 58,000 voters, and 25,000 of them were voters whose primary ballots were returned, where did the list of 33,000 other names come from?

These numbers don’t make sense.  Perhaps there’s a reasonable explanation.  We’ll be following up to try to get you some answers.

But at least 6,800 loose ballots won’t be floating around in Washoe County this fall.  That’s progress.

And now we await the Nevada Republican Party’s press release taking credit for it.

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

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