by Michael Lyle, Nevada Current
Nevada fake electors falsified documents. Election workers resigned after being intimidated and threatened. County clerks sought to hand count paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines.
Since the 2020 presidential election, a slew of proposals and actions that were based on conspiracy theories around alleged, and unfounded, mass voter fraud were put forward in Nevada in an attempt to drastically alter the election process and shape election results.
Democratic lawmakers are proposing various bills this session to protect the process, including measures that would make some actions, such as threatening poll workers or being a fake elector, a felony with different degrees of punishment.
Senate Bill 406 would make harassing or intimidating election workers a category E felony, which according to state statute comes with a one to four year sentence.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the bill sponsor, said numerous times on the campaign trail that he intended to criminalize harassment against election workers.
Gabriel Di Chiara, the chief deputy secretary of state who presented the bill, said the state has “seen unbelievable turnover in election officials” in the last several years due to threats of violence, harassment and intimidation.
“Elections don’t work without people,” he added.
The state has seen numerous election officials resign citing various reasons, including Washoe County’s election clerk Deanna Spikula, who left her position last year after receiving numerous threats to her office.
“We’re heard too many stories about workers being followed to their cars from locations other than polling places like a county building or targeted harassment that may take place at a worker’s home,” Di Chiara said.
The bill also outlines some protections for election observers to prevent people from monitoring the process.
“Working with advocacy groups, there were concerns some elements of this bill could be used to unfairly target individuals who are participating in election observation, poll observation or counting board observation,” Di Chiara said.
SB 406 passed unanimously out of committee ahead of its April 14 deadline.
While that bill saw bipartisan support, other proposals have received more pushback from the minority party.
Senate Bill 133, sponsored by Democratic state Sen. Skip Daly, makes it a crime to create or serve as a false slate of electors.
In the process of losing the presidential election in 2020, Donald Trump also lost Nevada..
That didn’t stop a group of Republicans, including Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald, from signing a certificate falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified electors” in an attempt to give the state’s electoral college votes to Trump.
Daly’s proposed bill would make future attempts a category B felony with a four to 10 year sentence – a harsher punishment than outlined by the secretary of state’s proposal.
Clark and Washoe County public defender’s office opposed the legislation, specifically the provision making the crime a category B felony.
Erica Roth, who represents the Washoe County Public Defender’s officer, said insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 are getting less time.
She pointed to one case of Devlyn Thompson who “was sent to 46 months in prison for assaulting a police officer with a speaker and metal baton.”
“He is looking at the same amount of time as someone if they were sentenced under this bill,” she said.
Both public defender’s offices proposed an amendment to make the crime a category D felony and lower the punishment to a one to four year sentence. Daly rejected the amendment.
If passed, SB 133 would also prevent those convicted from running for or being appointed to elected office as well as being employed by the state or local government.
Republican state Sens. Heidi Seevers Gansert and Lisa Krasner were the only Republicans who voted against moving the measure out of committee. Seevers Gansert said it was due to inadequate time to read through an amendment to the bill.
Assembly Bill 242 seeks to increase voting accessibility and require voting booths to add one more voting booth for people with disabilities, but an amendment adopted by the secretary of state’s office would also prevent ballots from being counted by hand.
The legislation follows attempts by Nye County to tabulate results by hand.
Ahead of the 2022 midterms, election deniers such as Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant appealed to counties to abandon voting machines and switch to hand-counting paper ballots.
“We know from studies that are both academic and practical that a machine is better at counting ballots than any group of people could be, especially when they need to follow the procedures laid out in statute,” Di Chiara said during the hearing.
He said if Nevada wants its “elections to remain as trusted as they are and to have the same high starts of accuracy and security” that means counties shouldn’t rely on a hand count.
The bill passed out of committee in a bipartisan vote with four Republicans against.
In a similar vein, Senate Bill 215 would require counties to return any money it received to purchase mechanical voting machines if they conduct a paper ballot.
The bill passed the Senate Wednesday in a 13 – 8 vote on party lines.
Lawmakers are also considering proposals that address voting in jail and uniformity in mail ballots.
Assembly Bill 286, sponsored by Assemblywoman Brittney Miller, would allow people who are in jail, but haven’t been convicted of a crime, to vote.
Some local jails have previously worked with groups to help people vote, but Miller said the bill would provide consistency statewide.
“These individuals still have a Constitutional right to participate in the electoral process and we need to make sure they have sufficient access to exercise that right,” Miller said.
The bill passed out of committee unanimously.
Assembly Bill 192, sponsored by Assemblywoman Cecelia Gonzalez, requires mail ballot envelopes in all Nevada counties be uniform.
The bill passed unanimously out of committee.
Assembly Joint Resolution 6 would amend the Nevada Constitution to adopt the National Popular Vote Compact, under which states would agree to award electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.
If passed, the resolution would have to be voted on again in the 2025 Legislative Session and go before voters during the 2026 midterm elections.
It still wouldn’t come into effect until a majority of states also pass Compacts.
The measure passed out of the Assembly on Monday 27-14 with all Republicans opposed. Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray Axelrod was excused.
As for the Republican election bills…
Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo has also introduced legislation to carry out his election promises, which includes ending universal mail ballots.
His omnibus election bill, Senate Bill 405, also seeks to change the deadline for mail-in ballots, calls for the implementation of a voter ID law and seeks to end “ballot harvesting.”
The bill, which is exempt from deadlines, has yet to be heard.
Lombardo called universal mail ballots, which were implemented during Covid and expanded during the 2021 session, “inefficient and unnecessary” during his state of the state address.
In a press call in March, the governor’s chief of staff, Ben Kieckhefer, argued the state could save money if it ended automatically sending ballots to registered voters, but didn’t say how much would be saved.
In January, Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager said attempts to roll back universal ballots is “a non-starter.”
“Fifty percent of Nevadans cast their ballot by mail last election,” he said. “That’s 500,000 Nevadans. That’s Democrats, Republicans, nonpartisans alike.”
Several other Republicans have proposed voter ID bills, but all died without a hearing.
