Before adjourning Monday night, lawmakers approved legislation that continues and refines the mail-in ballot system put in place for the 2020 elections.
AB321 by Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, provides mail ballots to all active voters for all future elections, both primary and general. But Frierson said people will be able to easily opt out and vote in person.
“In the last election, nearly half of the nation voted by mail so they didn’t have to choose between their health and voting,” he said.
Frierson said because mail-in voting is so convenient, voter participation increases.
AB321 also specifies minimum numbers of polling places and ballot drop boxes in the different counties.
Frierson said that is “to make sure we do not see lines for hours and hours. You should not have to wait in line seven hours in order to vote.”
But it makes it a felony for some one other than a county elections official to establish ballot boxes. And it strengthens Nevada’s signature verification process to ensure that the mail-in ballot is legitimate.
It also provides for a more robust system to clean out the names of voters who are deceased by directing the secretary of state’s office to work with Vital Statistics.
The bill allows election officials to have their names, phone numbers and addresses made confidential to prevent harassment.
It also allows people other than the voter or their immediate family to transport ballots to the voting centers and drop boxes, a practice opponents call “ballot harvesting.”
“The comfort for me was provided for me in that we have a robust signature verification process to make sure the signatures match,” he said. “If they don’t, they’re not counted.
Ballot harvesting violations, he said, were also raised to a felony.
The bill provides $6.2 million in 2022 and $5.99 million in 2023 to cover the cost of the requirements.
Frierson said the mail-in system worked very well in Nevada’s 2020 election and is used extensively in other states including Oregon and Colorado with no evidence of widespread fraud.
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