The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office has opened an investigation into the February 6th presidential primary election after voters were notified that their mail-in ballots had been counted even though they had not actually voted.
According to reports from local news outlets on Sunday night, voter history records on the office’s website listed both Democrat and Republican voters as having voted by mail, even when the individuals had voted in person or not voted at all. Nevada is one of several states that offer universal mail-in balloting, requiring registered voters to opt out of the system if they do not wish to receive a ballot early.
State officials quickly identified a “technical error” in the data upload system and took steps to address it. The error reportedly did not affect vote tabulation, which is handled by individual counties.
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In a statement addressing the steps taken to resolve the glitch, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar reported the following:
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.
The secretary again stressed that the vote count in both party primaries had not been affected by the error. The Democratic primary was called in favor of President Joe Biden, while two-thirds of the Republican vote went to “None of These Candidates,” followed by former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in second place.
Related: Nikki Haley Places Distant Second to “None of These Candidates” in Nevada Primary
On the Republican side, the election was mostly symbolic, as the party had previously decided to distribute its delegates via a caucus several days later. The primary was held only to comply with new regulations from the Democrat-controlled Nevada legislature. Former President Donald Trump handily won the party-sanctioned caucus several days later.
Even so, party officials expressed concern about the lack of safety features surrounding the mail-in ballot system.
“We take these reports very seriously,” said Nevada Republican Chairman Michael McDonald. “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.”
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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