Nevada says its new voter system is ready. Why are some still worried?

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

A new centralized voter registration system in the key swing state of Nevada is getting its first real-world test in a major presidential election, after practice runs in recent months showed significant problems in transferring data accurately.

State officials said the problems, which included assigning voters to the wrong precincts and mislabeling voters as “inactive,” have been addressed and that they expect Tuesday’s vote to go smoothly.

But Cari-Ann Burgess, the former interim Washoe County registrar who has been on administrative leave since September facing charges of insubordination and poor job performance, said that she believes the shortcomings have not been fully addressed. Burgess said she plans to file a whistleblower complaint soon asking for federal oversight of Nevada’s future elections. (Washoe County, home to Reno, is the largest county to attempt the data transfer this year.)

Burgess said she has no direct knowledge of what her office has done since her last day at work on Sept. 25, but believed the issues were so daunting, they likely couldn’t be fixed by the county’s understaffed registrar’s office before early voting began on Oct. 19.

The Voter Registration and Election Management Solution, mandated by the Nevada Legislature, centralizes voter registration data from 16 of the state’s 17 counties and promises to vastly improve the efficiency and security of elections. Even Burgess acknowledges how badly the state needed to modernize its voter registration system.

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, ran in 2022 on a promise to secure Nevada’s elections and rebuild voter confidence following efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the 2020 election.

The new voter registration system, which is separate from the machines used to vote, better tracks who is eligible to submit a ballot. Aguilar was determined to have it in place for the 2024 general election. It went live eight weeks before early voting began.

But the launch, which involves transferring massive voter datasets from antiquated county systems to the new centralized one, has strained understaffed county clerk offices already contending with their routine general election responsibilities.

Mock elections in the spring uncovered enough issues that clerks pressured Aguilar’s office to delay the “go-live” date until after the June primary. That gave the state enough time to address 20 issues revealed by the test runs. But it also meant the system’s first use in a real election comes during a contentious presidential contest in which one side is laying the groundwork to challenge unfavorable results.

“This is a project that we cannot get wrong,” Aguilar’s deputy in charge of elections told lawmakers in early 2024. “It has to be done right the first time.”

$30M project for state

Three election experts contacted by ProPublica said they weren’t in a position to judge whether Nevada made the right call in pushing out such a significant project in an election year. While there’s “never a good time” to change systems, one said, it appears that Nevada has put significant time and resources into the transition. Another said success is largely dependent on how well-staffed and funded local election offices are. A recent report by the Institute for Responsive Government found other states implementing such systems experienced similar problems.

Nevada has spent $30 million on the project, which was launched in early 2023. The secretary of state’s office worked closely for months with each county participating in the new system and has provided significant ongoing support during the transition.

Early and mail-in voting has been underway since Oct. 19 with only isolated reports of balloting errors. In the last presidential election, nearly 90 percent of Nevada voters cast their ballot before Election Day. A lack of widespread voter complaints in the weeks since early voting began confirms that the new system is working as intended, said Gabriel Di Chiara, Nevada’s chief deputy secretary of state.

But that hasn’t quieted Burgess, who says incorrect voter data wound up in the new system.

Burgess alleges the state rushed implementation, potentially creating a litany of problems as ballots are cast. State and county officials both denied the allegations and provided documentation indicating deadlines for critical data transfers were met across the state. They did, however, acknowledge they continued to discover problems before voting began and were working to correct them.

Burgess said testing of the new system revealed errors affecting tens of thousands of voters in Washoe County, including voters assigned to the wrong precincts and active voters labeled as inactive or vice versa. If a voter was incorrectly marked inactive, they wouldn’t receive a mail-in ballot but could still vote in person. She also said the new system lacks safeguards meant to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls. The secretary of state’s office denied that allegation, noting the new system is no different than the old system in that regard.

“I’m incredibly worried that this is going to hurt this election,” Burgess said. “But I’m also worried that people who should not be voting are voting.”

Burgess said Washoe County didn’t have time to ensure that information for each of the county’s 384,000 voters had transferred properly to the new system. She acknowledged that her office was working tirelessly to correct the errors when she left and said she did not have firsthand knowledge of the progress made after she was placed on leave.

Clark County, home to Las Vegas, is using the same vendor as the state but will wait until next year to transfer its data to the new system.

Clerks vow to ‘work their butts off’

Burgess is the only county election official to publicly raise such concerns. Other clerks have criticized the timeline of the transition but haven’t reported problems with the data transfers. After persuading Aguilar to delay the launch until after the primary, the clerks promised to “work their butts off” to get the system ready for the general election, said Douglas County Clerk-Treasurer Amy Burgans. Clerks conducted four mock elections this year to ensure that “the integrity of the system was where it needed to be,” she said.

“It’s a frustrating time to switch to a new system when we are a purple state that really makes big decisions when it comes to a presidential election,” Burgans said. “The clerks have put the time and effort into ensuring that the integrity of the election is intact.”

She said the new system is instrumental in catching voters who attempt to vote in multiple counties.

Jim Hindle, the clerk-treasurer for Storey County, which has a population of about 4,100, also said he doesn’t have reservations about the new voter registration system. “It has been working fine for the last two weeks. We’ve had nothing come up that would cause us to lack any confidence,” he said.

The rollout hasn’t been free of issues, however. In Nye County, when voters arrived for the first day of early voting, the wrong election popped up on check-in kiosks, prompting the clerk to postpone opening the polls. In Lyon County, roughly 1,100 voters were given the wrong ballot because their precinct was placed in an incorrect district for the State Assembly. Although the problem was discovered last week, it dated back to the legacy system and wasn’t caused by the new system, state officials said. The error will only affect two legislative races and will have no impact on the presidential election.

While it wasn’t ideal to transition to a new system during a presidential election year, errors identified during testing were anticipated, identified and addressed, Di Chiara said. He added that there were risks associated with continuing to use the counties’ legacy voter management systems. Washoe County’s vendor, for example, had stopped supporting software used by the voter registrar’s office and fixes over the years had been piecemeal.

During February’s presidential primary election, some voters who hadn’t cast a ballot were incorrectly labeled by the legacy system as having voted. That mistake did not affect the vote totals. And during local primary elections, some voters were mailed the wrong ballots because of errors updating their addresses following redistricting. They received correct ballots before Election Day.

“The lesser of the two risks was getting everyone on the new system and providing them support,” Di Chiara said.

Problems with Washoe County data

Mock elections conducted before the system went live resulted in a list of 20 issues the state and its vendor had to resolve. Di Chiara refused to provide a description of the issues, citing statutes that say documents on the inner workings of election systems are confidential. But he provided ProPublica a progress report from Aug. 23, which indicated 18 of the 20 issues had been fixed by the go-live date. The remaining two were resolved before ballots were mailed to voters, he said.

Despite the fixes, messy data in Washoe County’s legacy system made its way into the new system. For example, Washoe County’s legacy system had labeled apartment buildings as commercial addresses. As a result, voters in those buildings were marked inactive in the new system. A county spokesperson said that problem was fixed before ballots were mailed. But it was just one of a multitude of data errors that forced the registrar’s staff to review individual records to ensure voters were properly categorized. “Issues identified during the rollout and extensive testing periods were addressed and resolved prior to the 2024 general election,” a Washoe County spokesperson said.

Efforts to lay the groundwork for election challenges in key states by the Trump campaign, the national Republican Party and their allies have been well documented. The implementation of Nevada’s new voter management system is already on the Republican National Committee’s radar. The party filed a public records request for documents associated with the mock elections run to test the new system. A common tactic by those trying to undermine confidence in voting is to amplify or exaggerate human errors that are routine in running elections, democracy protection experts say.

Burgess’ decision to go public follows a tumultuous 10 months as the chief elections officer for Washoe County, which she said culminated in her being forced out by county management. She also said she plans to file a lawsuit contesting what she sees as her probable termination after the election.

Under the strain of transferring to the new system, Burgess said she missed a federal deadline to clean the rolls of inactive voters. During a meeting to discuss it, she offered to step down to her former position of deputy registrar but was told to take stress-related leave. When she tried to return to work with a doctor’s note, she was given a letter from the county manager detailing a number of performance issues, including the missed deadline, insubordination for prematurely telling her staff about her leave and excessive use of overtime. She was also accused of trying to help several churches set up ballot drop-off boxes, which aren’t allowed under state law. Burgess said she was simply helping them with third-party ballot collection, which is legal in Nevada.

“You have been insubordinate, and your ability to competently carry out your duties is in question,” Brown wrote in a letter Burgess provided to ProPublica. “Washoe County will allow you to remain on paid leave until the completion of the general election, after which these issues will be reviewed and decisions about your continued employment will be determined.”

Burgess said she sought the job of registrar to help restore voter confidence in elections. Burgess is a registered nonpartisan. She said she voted for Trump this year as well as for U.S. Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Democrat. She said she investigated every complaint, even those from some of the county’s most radicalized election deniers, and did her best to keep operations transparent.

Craig Silverman contributed reporting.