Election Suppression Efforts in Nevada

Claims for the Need for “Election Integrity”

Since 2016, the right-wing operatives have been calling for “election integrity” measures to “secure” the nation’s electoral system. These efforts are in concert with efforts to undermine voter confidence in the electoral process with allegations of voter fraud, non-citizen voting, and vote switching by vote tabulators.

Voter fraud is basically non-existent in Nevada.  The Heritage Foundation identified 11 cases of voter fraud since 1982.  All identified cases are less than 1 percent of Nevada’s registered voters.  

The Heritage Foundation identified 1, maybe 2, cases of non-citizen voting in 2014.  This is not the rampant issue that right-wing accounts are claiming.

Claims about vote switching by voting machines have been around since the early 2000s. The claims were pushed into prominence during the 2016 election.  However, there hasn’t been a sustained claim of vote switching. Most claims can be traced back to human error. Both Fox News and NewsMax lost defamation cases brought by Dominion Voting regarding these claims. These claims are usually followed by calls for hand-counting ballots. In reality, machine counting is faster, more accurate, and more cost-effective. Nye and Esmeralda Counties proved the ineffectiveness of hand-counting ballots during the 2022 and 2024 elections.

In Nevada, there is an interesting claim regarding systemic voter fraud.  “Election Integrity experts” claim that after the election departments in Washoe and Clark count the vote-by-mail ballots, the ubiquitous “they” print and insert ballots into the system to win the election. There is evidence that anyone can point to other than every night, more ballots come in for Democrats, who traditionally will use vote-by-mail. This claim was heard on several talk radio shows and podcasts.

Voter ID

In Nevada, there is a strong push to institute voter identification at the polls.  Repair the Vote organized a ballot initiative, Question 7, to require voters to show identification at the polls prior to voting.  Question 7 passed its first ballot vote with over 73% of the vote during the 2024 election.  It is expected to pass in the 2026 election with similar results.

The argument for voter identification is that it is a common-sense solution to the “rampant issue” of non-citizen voting.  Simple “organic” social media was used to reinforce this idea.

Repair the Vote and the NV GOP used simple, but very white, advertising to support their campaign.

Additionally, there was an attempt to bypass the ballot initiative and bring voter identification to the Nevada Legislature.  AB499 was brought forward to institute voter identification for the 2026 election, but it will increase access for drop-off ballot boxes. Gov. Lombardo vetoed this effort.

Attacks on Vote-by-Mail

During the 2020 pandemic, Nevada instituted universal vote-by-mail in which registered voters received mail-in ballots.  The universal vote-by-mail was made permanent, thereby increasing ballot accessibility. This has been largely derided by right-wing operatives in Nevada. In 2023, Gov. Lombardo proposed ending the effort. 

President Trump has recently stated publicly that he will ban vote-by-mail.  This is after pushing Republicans and MAGA voters to “swamp the vote” by any means necessary, including vote-by-mail, which worked in the 2024 elections, giving Republicans many gains, including the White House, Governorships, and Senate control.

There has been a continued effort to undermine Nevada’s vote-by-mail efforts by Republicans. Before the 2024 election, Trump and the RNC filed several lawsuits regarding the counting of mail ballots and which mail ballots to count. They lost the suit.

Several bad actors, including The Nevada Globe and Robert Beadles, are promoting Trump’s current efforts. 

Voter Roll Clean-Up

Chuck Muth, Robert Beadles, and other bad actors have pushed for voter roll clean-up.  Muth’s PigPen Project has taken the lead in these efforts. Muth allows citizens to submit the names and addresses of people who are no longer eligible to vote. Additionally, they have purchased the US Postal Service address change lists. Most of their efforts were not accepted by the clerks' offices.  And the NV SOS sent guidance to clerk’s offices not to accept such submissions.  The new VERMS system with the SOS will consolidate voter roll clean-up and help prevent any issues.

The Meyers Report

The Meyers Report presents itself as a nearly 40-year-old discussion forum comprising experts from various fields, including economics, medicine, and retail. However, they are pushing election integrity conspiracy theorist Cleta Mitchell and anti-vaxx conspiracy content. 

The Meyers Report issued an Election Rules Review paper that ranked Nevada as the lowest state for election integrity, as well as several foreign countries. The reasons for this rating include:

1. Mail-in Ballots

2. Ballot Harvesting

3. Weak Voter ID laws

4. Counting Mail-in Ballots received after election day.

This report was amplified by Chuck Muth, Megan Barth, and the FairfaxGOP.  It has been confined to right-wing channels only.