Nevada voters were thrown into a state of bewilderment and apprehension this past weekend when they discovered that their mail-in ballots were marked as counted for the February 6 presidential primary, despite their non-participation.
Local news outlet 8 News Now reported that these inconsistencies in voter histories elicited an immediate response from the Secretary of State’s office on Monday.
The issue first came to light on Sunday when voters started noticing discrepancies in their voting records. "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 informed 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." The office suggested that the problem might have originated from some counties' failure to adhere to the correct procedures for updating their voter registration data.
Each county is tasked with the nightly uploads of their voter registration to the state database, which subsequently generates the public voter file on the state website. However, the necessary steps to exclude non-returning mail ballot voters were reportedly overlooked, leading to the display of incorrect voting histories. The Secretary of State’s office reassured voters that they are validating new files from each county and updating them as soon as the data’s accuracy is confirmed.
The full statement from the Secretary of State’s office reads:
"After working closely with Nevada’s county clerks, registrars, and their IT staff, the Nevada Secretary of State’s office is confident that all issues related to erroneous vote history have been identified and fixes are in progress.
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.
The 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; some of those steps were not taken, which resulted in inaccurate data.
Our office has been validating new files from each county and moving them into production as soon as the accuracy of the data is verified. Some counties may not see updates until after the nightly file upload, but if counties have taken the appropriate steps all voter data should be accurate within 48 hours. A comprehensive report will be provided as soon as is practicable.
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