By Jack Phillips
Nevada’s Secretary of State’s office on Monday said that reports of numerous voter irregularities found on Sunday were caused by an error that is now being fixed.
Voters found that unmailed Nevada ballots were showing up as counted when the voters had not voted at all or mailed in their ballots, the Nevada secretary’s office told local media 8 News Now.
During the primary earlier this month, the Republican side went to “none of these candidates,” as former President Donald Trump didn’t appear on the ballot but was still ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. He eventually won the Nevada GOP’s caucus. For Democrats, President Joe Biden won the primary.
Local media reported that over the past weekend, several individuals contacted news outlets to say that they never voted by mail or even voted in the primary. But the state system showed their vote was counted.
“On Sunday, February 18, the Secretary of State’s Office became aware of possible technical issues related to the vote history of individuals who did not participate in the Presidential Preference Primary,” a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office told 8 News Now. “Elections and IT staff began working on the issue immediately, and met with county clerks and registrars this morning. We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and will provide further updates as we can.”
Another statement, issued to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, added that the “office has been validating new files from each county and moving them into production as soon as the accuracy of the data is verified.” Within 48 hours, the voter data will be updated and should be accurate, the office continued.
Elaborating, it told the outlet that it is “an error that relates to the code used for when a voter is sent a mail ballot and does not return it” and has “no connection in any way to vote tabulation.”
Officials with the office, overseen by Democrat Cisco Aguilar, are now “confident that all issues related to erroneous vote history have been identified and fixes are in progress,” according to a statement.
“The issue was as follows: on a nightly basis, each county uploads their voter registration data to the Secretary of State’s database, which executes code to create the single statewide voter registration file that users see when they log into vote.nv.gov,” it said, adding that “legacy systems used by a number of the counties require additional steps be taken to ensure that voters who did not return their ballot do not have vote history” and that “some of those steps were not taken, which resulted in inaccurate data.”
A resident of Nevada and a Republican voter, Daphne Lee, told the Review-Journal that she and her family checked their voting history on Sunday after hearing of reports that it may be incorrect. Ms. Lee and her family’s mail-in ballots were counted during the most recent primary, although the woman and her family didn’t vote.
Meanwhile, she attempted to opt out of mail-in ballots but was told that she wasn’t registered to vote and her voting history didn’t exist anymore. “It’s just so frustrating,” Ms. Lee said. “This makes everyone uncomfortable.”
The Epoch Times has contacted the Nevada secretary of state’s office for comment.
In an X post, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo wrote that the state is “working diligently to resolve the issue with their website” and that “the voter history glitch on the website does not impact vote tabulation.”
The Nevada Republican Party said in a statement that a number of GOP voters said their votes were counted when they didn’t vote in the primary.
“We take these reports very seriously,” said Chairman Michael McDonald in a statement. “The cornerstone of our Republic is the trust and confidence of the American people in the electoral process. Any indication of irregularities must be thoroughly investigated to ensure the integrity of our elections.”
Notably, Nevada is one of a few states that includes universal mail-in balloting, which means that each voter automatically receives a ballot in the mail. It’s drawn criticism from Republicans, and after the 2020 election, lawyers for President Trump argued that the state’s elections were fraught with fraud, filing several lawsuits against state officials.
Registered voters in the state can make a choice to opt out of getting mail-in ballots if they choose to do so. Nevada voters also can look at their voting history via the secretary of state’s website.
