Silver State Times

An elections analyst suggests that law and culture are responsible for slow voter roll updates, particularly in Nevada.

A report that thousands of Nevadans who had moved used their old addresses to vote in the November 2020 general elections held little shock value for Gina Swoboda, a former Arizona elections official under two administrations and executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF).

"The VRA [federal Voting Rights Act] and state law require local election officials to go through a lot of steps to take someone who has moved off the voting rolls,’ Swoboda told the Silver State Times. “The process can take years.”

She added that for decades the push has been to “expand the franchise” when it comes to voting.

“We allowed women the right to vote, got rid of Jim Crow laws, allowed overseas military members the right through absentee ballots,” she said. “The trend has been expansion rather than taking voters off the rolls.”

An analysis of U.S. Postal Service's national change of address (NCOA) data showed that nearly 17,000 Nevada voters moved but still cast their November 2020 general election ballots from their old home addresses.

The Silver State Times compared the NCOA data to the state of Nevada’s official file of registered voters. It found that, as of Feb. 3, 2021, there were still 30,229 individuals on Nevada voter rolls at their old addresses who told the post office they were moving prior to Nov. 3, 2020.

Election law gives counties the option – but doesn’t require them --to enter an agreement with the U.S. Post Office to receive notices of voters changing their addresses. If the county receives such a notice, it’s then required to send a postcard to the voter asking if they have moved. If the county receives no reply within 30 days, the voter is placed into inactive status, but is still permitted to vote.

Last year, Nevada deputy secretary of state for elections Wayne Thorley issued a statement in response to confusion over voting status.

“In order for a registered voter to be designated as inactive, a piece of election mail sent to the voter must have been returned as undeliverable and the voter must have failed to respond to a mailer asking the voter to confirm their voter registration information,” Thorley said.

His statement continued, “A lack of recent vote history on the part of a registered voter only comes into play after the registered voter has been placed into inactive status. If an inactive registered voter fails to vote in two federal election cycles [four years] and the inactive registered voter has no other voter activity during this time, their voter registration in Nevada is canceled.”

The Silver State Times analysis found more than 30,000 registered voters still in the active file who filed out NCOA forms that they were moving before the Nov. 3, 2020 election-- including 10,692 who submitted them more than a year before the election.

Of voters still registered at their old Nevada addresses, 1,670 moved in 2017, 2,937 in 2018 and 6,085 in 2019. Another 12,617 left the state.

That includes 2,666 who moved to California, 1,023 to Texas, 942 to Arizona, 644 to Utah, 622 to Washington, 601 to Idaho, 610 to Florida, 431 to Colorado, 184 to Illinois and 180 to New York.

Of those who moved but voted, 71%, or 11,752, were in Clark County, home to 73% of the state’s population. Approximately 16% of voters who moved, or 2,636, were in Washoe, home to 15% of Nevadans.