Groups hope next legislative session yields clarity on election reform

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John Locher / AP

People wait in line at one of a few in-person voting places during a nearly all-mail primary election Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Las Vegas.

Tue, Jul 28, 2020 (2 a.m.)

Emily Zamora is concerned about November.

As the general election gets closer and the coronavirus pandemic shows no signs of letting up, lawmakers will need to determine how to best handle making voting accessible to all Nevadans, she said.

“The state doesn’t really have any type of blueprint on how to handle elections in the case that there is a pandemic or any type of natural disaster,” said Zamora, the executive director of Silver State Voices, a progressive nonprofit that advocates for increased civic engagement with a focus on marginalized communities.

What lawmakers decide upon their expected return to Carson City this week for another special session of the Nevada Legislature could lay out the precedent, she said.

“For us, we really want to see the Legislature create that blueprint on how to address, yes, the election in this pandemic for November, but if, God forbid, anything happens in the future, we don’t have to go to a special session to figure it out,” she said. “We’ll already have a protocol on how to handle things.”

Gov. Steve Sisolak has outlined a list of topics lawmakers are expected to address, which includes electoral reform to help Nevadans vote “in a way that does not dangerously expose them to increased risk of COVID-19 infection.” He is expected to call a second session later this week.

Nevada’s June 9 primary was held mostly via mail with each county having at least one in-person location. Clark County, after legal challenges from the state Democratic Party and other Democratic organizations, expanded to three locations.

The Nevada secretary of state’s office is not preparing for a mail-in election in November, though the office will hold an information campaign to inform Nevadans of their right to absentee ballots. Wayne Thorley, the deputy secretary of state for elections, has said the secretary of state’s office does not have the money to hold an election predominantly through mail.

The cost just to produce mail-in ballots and mail them to voters, Thorley said, would likely be more than $2 million, which doesn’t include additional costs for leasing the necessary equipment to process mail-in ballots.

“When you pay for postage prepaid return on all the envelopes, all the extra equipment that’s needed, and then the voter education that’s required to go along with that, it gets very expensive,” Thorley said.

Any bill passed in the special session that would require a mail-in election would have to come with extra funds, Thorley said.

Annette Magnus, executive director of the progressive group Battle Born Progress, said activists are hoping for a bill that allows both mail-in and in-person voting in November. Relying on absentee ballots, she said, may confuse voters as to their options.

“Our thought on that is (that) people already don’t understand the voting process as it is, and if you add another layer — we’ve gone from absentee, to mail-in, to opt-in, which is basically absentee again — you’re just going to confuse people,” Magnus said.

Zamora said there needs to be balance between expanding in-person voting and ensuring voters are kept as safe as possible.

“We don’t want anything to look like what a normal general election would look like, but there should be more locations than what was provided for the primary election,” Zamora said.

Drop-off boxes for ballots are important as some people are not comfortable dropping their ballots in their mailbox, Zamora said.

During the primary, voters would either have to drop off ballots themselves or send them with a family member. Zamora said she would like to see more flexibility with that rule, as, for example, some Native American communities were under lockdown during the primary and their tribal leaders couldn’t bring in their ballots.

“There has to be a flexibility on other people being able to turn in your ballots on your behalf,” Zamora said.

Magnus said activists aren’t pushing for an election without any in-person locations because many communities of color may not trust voting by mail due to historical disenfranchisement.

“Also, there’s just people who like to vote in person,” Magnus said. “We’ve always been an in-person voting state in Nevada. This is really the first time we saw vote by mail in a big way.”

Zamora has sent letters to legislative leadership and the governor on what activists would like to see. She said that the lawmakers she’s spoken with have been receptive to her concerns about holding an in-person election during the pandemic.

“The fact of the matter is, cases of COVID-19 are through the roof in Nevada, worse than they were in June when we had the primary,” Magnus said. “So this notion that we can somehow go back to in-person voting, it’s absurd to me and it’s completely irresponsible on the part of the secretary of state.”

This would be the second special session of the summer. The first, which lasted nearly two weeks, balanced the state budget following a $1.2 billion deficit from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. The second will address issues including criminal justice reform, removing statutory barriers on the state unemployment insurance program and stabilizing businesses during the pandemic, Sisolak has previously indicated.

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