Jim Hartman: GOP lawsuit claims inflated voter rolls

Republicans are accusing Nevada election officials of a failure to maintain accurate voter registration records.

In a federal lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party, Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and five county election officials are alleged to have violated the National Voter Registration Act.

The lawsuit asserts “at least five counties in Nevada have inordinately high voter registration rates.”

The suit claims that three counties have voter registration rates above 100% of their total adult citizens: Douglas (104%), Lyon (105%), and Storey (113%).

An additional two counties are alleged to have registration rates above 90%: Carson City (92%) and Clark (91%).

Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office has responded by saying the GOP’s data is unreliable and that the secretary of state is conducting proper list management, with a statewide active registration rate of 86%.

The RNC used estimates for the voting age population and hard numbers for registrations.

Ford’s office notes the RNC has a similar legal action in Michigan but has not targeted far higher registration rates in GOP dominant states.

Ironically, the RNC legal challenge is to county election officials for lax voter roll administration in Republican counties – Douglas, Lyon and Storey.

Carson City Clerk-Recorder Scott Hoen is calling the lawsuit brought by the Republican Party against him and the other defendants “unfortunate.”

“It is unfortunate that the RNC used inaccurate data when filing the lawsuit,” Hoen told the Nevada Appeal. “Carson City has a little over 85% of the possible adult population registered and is in direct conflict with their claims.”

With 39,700 active Carson City voters and 46,504 eligible to vote from U.S. Census population estimates, the registration rate is 85%, he said.

Hoen is a former Carson City GOP Chair.

The RNC lawyers allege violation of the NVRA by the Nevada Secretary of State for failing to make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official list of eligible voters.”

However, the secretary of state’s office already removed – using the National Change of Address process – nearly 100,000 ineligible voters from the active voter lists in 2023. That doesn’t constitute a “reasonable effort” in the eyes of RNC lawyers.

They are likely to lose the legal argument. A Florida federal appeals court in 2019 found that use of the NCOA process satisfied the voter list management duties of an election official.

Thus, the Nevada Secretary of State, along with the five county election officials sued by the RNC who do similar list maintenance, are following the “reasonable effort” requirement mandated by law.

This lawsuit is not helpful for Nevada Republicans.

Election officials have been cooperative and professional in working with Republicans and others to learn the procedures to further clean up voter rolls. Suing the people doing their jobs accomplishes nothing and alienates them.

With a large transient population, Nevada is also one of the fastest growing states, making culling and maintaining voter lists immeasurably harder than in other states.

Voter rolls are not clean.

The real problem is with Nevada’s election law – universal mail-in voting.

Thousands of ballots are being mailed to people who have moved but are still on the voter rolls. That ballot is available for anybody to grab and takes the chance to fill out.

The potential for voter fraud is very real, but proving it is extremely difficult.

In 2020, the Nevada Republican Party claimed to have four boxes of evidence that 122,918 fraudulent votes were cast. The contents were hype and unsupported suspicion.

In a detailed report, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske found only 10 cases of ballots being cast in the name of deceased voters and 10 cases of potential double voting.

Nevada election officials are not the problem. They deserve public support.

E-mail Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.