Nevada braces for Supreme Court ruling on mail ballots

All but 11,875 mail-in ballots cast in Nevada’s two most populous counties during the 2024 general election arrived at county offices by the end of Election Day.

The future of a 2020 Nevada law that allows counties to accept mail ballots after Election Day, however, is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is deliberating a similar Mississippi law.

Plaintiffs in the case, the Republican National Committee and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, want to set an Election Day deadline for accepting mail ballots. A 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump intends to do the same.

They argue that the laws in 16 states undermine trust and confidence in the election process.

Nevada accepts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day for four subsequent days. Mail without a legible postmark is accepted for up to three days.

During the 2024 process, the number of ballots received had dwindled to under 10 by the fourth day, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said Wednesday.

“A majority of Nevadans get their ballot in before Election Day,” he told reporters.

Ballots received by Clark and Washoe counties after that day represented about 2 percent of the overall mail ballots processed.

That figure has to be closer to zero percent, Aguilar said, “to make sure every ballot gets counted across the state. Because if someone makes the effort to vote, we need to make the effort to process the ballot.”

The Supreme Court ruling is expected in late June, according to The Associated Press. That would put it after Nevada’s upcoming primary elections but could change the law by November’s midterms.

Rebecca Gill, UNLV associate professor of political science and director of the Women’s Research Institute of Nevada, has examined the court case.

“If I were in other times with a different court, or had I not heard the oral arguments, I would revert to saying, ‘There’s no way they overturn Mississippi’s law,’” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Gill is no longer so sure. She said that during oral arguments last month, conservative justices appeared to be open to unproven claims of widespread voter fraud.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they overturned this law,” she added.

The central argument in the case is whether federal laws set a uniform Election Day and whether all ballots have to be received by state officials the same day.

‘Not to benefit one party over another’

Nevada Democratic U.S. Reps. Steven Horsford and Susie Lee and their New York colleague, Rep. Joe Morelle, joined Aguilar Wednesday for a discussion about election security and voting rights.

“We’re bracing for what may be a very, very bad Supreme Court decision,” Morelle said.

To counter a possible change to the mail voting law, Horsford recommended an increase of voting locations and drop boxes, and advocated for educating the electorate before Election Day.

Clark County, which didn’t return a message seeking comment, would be responsible for that.

Horsford said Nevada’s mail voting benefits all Nevada voters.

“That’s not to benefit one party over another party,” he said. “Everybody participates in mail balloting, and everybody should have access.”

Morelle defended the state laws that allow the post-Election Day receipt of ballots.

“Does it make it a little more difficult for election administrators? I’m sure it does, but I think they understand that you as a voter have a chance to vote before polls close,” he said.

Morelle noted that Trump recently voted by mail. The president has made unproven claims of widespread election fraud since his 2020 re-election loss.

In a statement to the Review-Journal on Friday, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote, “Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda.”

Perception of fraud

David Gibbs, president of the Repair the Vote PAC, said he also is monitoring the Mississippi case. His organization is leading a Nevada ballot initiative to institute voter ID requirements.

“I would consider that a win for election integrity,” he told the Review-Journal about the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning the state laws.

“They’ll build some faith back in the election process knowing that, ‘OK, we know that there’s no way that ballots are being sent in after the election,’” he added.

Gibbs pointed to a growing distrust in American elections, adding that the current process also creates confusion.

“Am I saying there’s widespread fraud?” he said. “Unless you can prove it, the answer is no.”

The problem is that there’s a perception of it, Gibbs said.

“That’s the issue that we deal with: If people think elections are crooked, then why vote?” he said.

A recent PBS News/NPR/Marist survey found that two-thirds of Americans expressed confidence in the election process. That was a decrease of 10 percentage points from a poll conducted in the weeks before the last general election and a record low since the firm started polling the subject in 2020, the firm said.

“Every ballot should be received on Election Day and counted on Election Day,” Chuck Muth, a Nevada Republican and president of an organization that’s challenged the state’s voters rolls, told the Review-Journal in November.

He said Nevadans have plenty of options to cast a vote early.

Mail voting popular in Nevada

Clark and Washoe counties received 493,296 mail ballots before Election Day in 2024, with 82,475 received on Election Day, data shows.

Aguilar said that about 90 percent of those ballots were processed by the end of election night, leaving the counties with an 8 percent bottleneck, separate from the 2 percent of the ballots that arrived in the ensuing days.

“We need to increase that capacity so we can get voters real-time information on election night, which will help us build the trust in the overall system,” he said.

Data for other counties wasn’t immediately available. Aguilar’s office said mail voting was the most popular choice among all Nevada voters with rural Douglas and Nye counties leading in participation.

Aguilar referenced a recent U.S. Postal Service rule change that might become an issue in future elections.

The service said that moving forward, a postmark date might not indicate the date the mail was collected or dropped off. People still may request one in person, according to the agency.

“We should educate voters to mail their ballot early or to drop it off at a ballot box,” Aguilar said.

Gov. Joe Lombardo’s office didn’t speculate about what a Supreme Court ruling could mean for Nevada.

“Governor Lombardo supports common sense reforms to Nevada law that strengthen the integrity of our elections,” it said in a statement Thursday. “He led the effort to put voter ID on the ballot and has called for ending universal mail ballots, believing only registered qualified military, or voters who request a mail ballot, should get mail ballots.”

Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is challenging Lombardo in this year’s gubernatorial race, signed Nevada onto an amicus brief in support of Mississippi, which alleged that establishing an Election Day deadline could lead to a flood of litigation related to ballots that were cast on time but had delayed arrivals.

“If this Court does not resolve the question presented in advance of the next federal general election, that question could arrive at this Court’s doorstep anyway, but in an emergency posture,” the filing said. “Such litigation is taxing for states and courts and can result in outcome-altering judgments without adequate time for full briefing and sustained deliberation.”

Ford’s office referred to the brief when asked for further comment.

‘A world of hurt’

Changing the mail voting laws could make a difference in a closely divided state like Nevada, where local elections are decided by fewer votes, said Gill, the UNLV professor.

She expressed concern that a Supreme Court reversal could lead down a path that ends with a rollback of mail and early voting.

“The rationale that the litigants used to argue against Mississippi — in my view — quite clearly implies that early voting is also not allowed because it all hinges on the idea of ‘Election Day,’” she said. “But early voting happens before Election Day.”

Gill, who has analyzed voter fraud, said Nevada is a prime place for early and mail voting because of the nature of voters’ 24/7 work schedules.

The state, she said, already has guardrails that prevent illegal voting.

Gill said she was more concerned about cuts to federal funding for elections or the White House allowing agencies like the Postal Service to rewrite rules in a way that could disenfranchise voters.

“If this were to impact early voting, then Nevada is in a world of hurt, because we’re really good on early voting and a lot of people rely on early voting,” she said.

Gill noted that federal laws give states control over how they conduct elections and give Congress the ability to set boundaries.

The fact that federal lawmakers haven’t made changes to mail voting indicates to her that they don’t believe the state laws pose election fraud concerns, she said.

“It is astonishing that we’re even really talking about this,” Gill said.