Silver State Times

Nevada's top elections official says 2020 state-certified vote totals don't match its records of individual votes actually cast because the state deletes the vote history of anyone who has died or moved since the election.

"Since (Election Day), numerous voters have cancelled their registrations, passed away, or moved either out of state or to a different county" and their record of having voted last November has already been deleted from state records, said Jennifer A. Russell, spokesman for Nevada Secretary of State Barbara K. Cegavske, in a written statement to the Silver State Times.

A Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) report released last Thursday found that 15 of 17 Nevada counties certified more ballots cast than state records showed there were individual voters recorded as voting, a total of 8,952 excess ballots statewide.

VRF told the Silver State Times that it stands by its analysis, which compared vote totals by county and precinct certified by Cegavske on Nov. 24, 2020 to official individual voter records provided by her office as of Feb. 3, 2021. The group added up the individual votes, calculating "Registered Voter Ballots Cast" totals by Nevada county and precinct to compare to the certified totals.

Russell said she believes the VRF analysis is "fundamentally incorrect" because it doesn't account for individual voter histories from November that the state has already deleted from its files during the approximately two-month period.

"The farther away from the election the data is acquired, the more it will have changed," she said.

Russell said that the state deletes vote histories for Nevadans who move between counties.

"Nevada’s counties cannot transfer a voter’s election history to another county, so if “John Doe” votes and has his ballot counted in Lander County, then moves to Mineral County, once he is registered in Mineral County he will show no vote history because he has no vote history in Mineral County."

The complete VRF analysis, including the precinct-level calculations and names of individual Nevada voters in each who state records show voted or didn't vote in November, is published on VoteRef.com.

Cegavske, 69, of Las Vegas, is serving her second term as Nevada Secretary of State. First elected in 2014, the Republican previously spent six years in the Nevada Assembly and 12 years in the Nevada State Senate. 

In April, the Nevada Republican Party Central Committee voted to censure Cegavske for refusing to investigate allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections.

Cegavske will be termed out after 2022.