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Baris-Ozer
Election integrity: How Nevada ensures safe and secure voting
Oct 17, 2024
While elections work differently depending on where you live, all states have security measures to ensure the integrity of every vote. With that in mind, The Fulcrum presents a six-part series on how elections work in swing states. Created by Issue One, these state summaries focus on each state's election process from registration to certification.
Our freedom to vote in fair and secure elections is the foundation of our system of self-governance established under the U.S. Constitution. As citizens, we have a voice that many people around the world do not.
Because the majority of elections are run at a local level, the voting experience can be very different depending on where a voter lives, but all states, including Nevada, have verification processes in place before, during, and after votes are cast to ensure the integrity of the election. Whether you cast your ballot in-person or by mail, early or on Election Day, your vote counts.
Here is what you need to know about how elections work in Nevada to make sure that your vote is kept safe and secure and is counted with integrity.
Registration
To ensure their eligibility, all voters must register to vote in order to cast a ballot.
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- The voter registration deadline in Nevada is October 22nd, 2024 and the deadline to register by mail is October 8, 2024 and in-person registration is available through Tuesday, November 5, 2024.
- For more information: https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/voters/registering-to-vote
Ways to vote
Once registered, a voter in Nevada may either vote in-person or through an absentee ballot. Both options have transparent processes to ensure ballots are kept secure and counted accurately.
Vote with a mail ballot:
- Nevada is a universal vote by mail state, meaning registered voters in Nevada are automatically sent a ballot in the mail.
- Mail must be postmarked on or before Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, 2024 and received by the County Clerk/Registrar of Voters not later than 5:00 PM on November 9, 2024 in order to count. Mail ballots may also be delivered by hand to the County Clerk/Registrar of Voters before polls close at 7:00 PM on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, 2024.
- For more information about voting with a mail ballot, see here: https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/voters/ registering-to-vote
Vote early in-person:
- Early voting starts on Saturday, October 19, 2024 and is available until Friday, November 1, 2024.
- See here for details about early voting in different counties: https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/election- information/2024-election-information/2024-voting-locations
Vote in-person on Election Day:
- Election Day is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Polls are open from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
- For same-day registration, voters must bring a valid ID card and any other form of valid identification to vote on Election Day. See here for details: https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/election-information/same-day- registration
There are also options for military and overseas voting, more information is available here: https://www.nvsos. gov/sos/elections/voters/uniformed-overseas-citizens
Track your ballot: https://nevada.ballottrax.net/voter/
Securely counting every ballot during the voting period
Before, during, and after ballots are cast, Nevada has procedures to review and verify election processes.
- Members of the public may observe voting, preparation of absentee ballots, handling and delivery of all ballots, counting of ballots and post-election audits.
- 48 states conduct some type of post-election audit. Nevada is one of 37 states that require a traditional post- election tabulation audit, involving auditable paper ballots.
- All voting equipment in Nevada must meet rigorous security standards and goes through a series of tests and audits to ensure its safety and accuracy. Nevada’s legal standard is for a voting system to meet or exceed federal standards and to have been certified by the Voting System Testing and Certification Program of the Election Assistance Commission.
- Mail-in ballots also are verified to ensure validity. Election officials check the signature on the absentee ballot envelope against the voter registration signature or other signatures available in the clerk’s records using either an electronic or manual process. A ballot with a signature that matches signatures in the voter’s record are processed and prepared for counting.
Polls close and reporting begins
- Counties typically begin reporting unofficial election results shortly after polls close on Election Day, Tuesday, November 5, 2024. Results are not considered final until the election is certified.
- Results are available on the Nevada Secretary of State page: https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/election- information/2024-election-information
Certifying the election
- The governing body conducting the election must meet to verify that the unofficial results reported in each precinct or election district were accurate. Final results are only declared after election officials go through steps to verify the count, checking for accuracy and resolving any error. During this process, known as canvassing, election officials count every eligible ballot cast, check for duplicates, verify voter status, and give voters a chance to rectify mistakes that might otherwise disqualify their ballot.
- In Nevada, Boards of County Commissioners must meet on or before November 15, 2024 to canvass the returns.
- On November 26, 2024 Justices of the state Supreme Court meet with the Secretary of State to canvass the vote. That same day, Nevada’s Governor issues certificates of election and proclamations declaring the election of candidates
- See: https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Documents/CanvassingTheVoteInNevada.pdf
Meeting of the Electoral College
- Nevada’s slate of electors meet on December 17, 2024 to send their certified votes for president and vice president to Congress.
Resources
For more information on how elections work in Nevada,visit the Nevada Secretary of State’s office or register to vote at vote.gov.
For additional national and other state-by-state information, go to https://www.howelectionswork.org/
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Project 2025 would restrict freedom of religion, writes Quince.
Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images
What kind of America do you want?
Oct 16, 2024
Quince, a member of the board of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, was the first African American woman to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and as chief justice.
On Nov. 5, in elections around the country, we will determine whether these United States of America will continue to aspire to be a democratic republic or whether this country will give up its freedoms and embrace authoritarianism.
As an African American female who has lived through — and is still living through — systemic racism in this country, I know that despite the flaws in our system, our best path forward is to continue to work for justice and equality for all, to work with and preserve the rule of law and embrace and strengthen the constitutional ideals that are the hallmark of our American democracy.
We need not speculate on what our lives will be like should extremism continue to take over the branches of government. We have already felt the brunt of a judiciary that is driven by ideology instead of legal rules and precedent. We have already witnessed legislatures that have instituted laws suppressing not only the right to vote but also the right to dissent and to assemble peaceably to express that dissent. We are witnessing the suppression of the free flow of knowledge through book banning. Our children are now being exposed to revisionist history, and they are being told what books they can read, not by their parents but by the state.
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Beyond these horrors lurks Project 2025. Promoted as a “conservative promise” for America, it is nothing close to traditional notions of conservatism. Project 2025 is an extremist blueprint for what is effectively authoritarian domination of America. It is a comprehensive plan to eradicate the American way of life, by ignoring the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution, the fundamental principles of human dignity and the ideals of a free, just and equal society that form the bedrock of this democratic America. The 30 chapters of Project 2025, described by Politico as an authoritarian Christian nationalist movement with the purposeful intention of moving America from a democracy to an autocracy-fascist-oriented country, are a daunting read.
This 922-page document seeks to destroy the fabric of our lives and many of our rights as embodied in the Bill of rights.
Here are but a few examples of what would happen to us if Project 2025 is implemented.
The First Amendment would be severely upended. While the First Amendment embodies five distinct rights — freedom of speech, freedom of religion (free exercise), freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and freedom to petition — religious freedom would be dramatically restricted if Project 2025 becomes the blueprint for America.
The freedom of religion has for many years been interpreted to provide for the separation of church and state. That separation would be eviscerated. Not only would Christianity be the “national” religion, but it would be supported by our taxpayer dollars going to faith-based organizations through USAID funding and other governmental programs.
We have already seen draconian legislation that has significantly stifled the right to assemble peacefully by designating protesters as rioters should any type of disturbance take place. And we know that counter protesters will make sure there is disturbance. We have also seen the press vilified when negative stories or opinions about specific politicians are expressed. Now we are threatened with the use of the military and Department of Justice resources to punish political opponents.
Beyond the threats to these basic rights, we see in Project 2025 the demise of our free public education system. While there certainly needs to be major improvements in our education system, Project 2025 seeks to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” Instead of proposing changes, proponents of Project 2025 want to essentially eliminate the system and turn education over to private and religious organizations that are not bound by any standards or admission policies. These provisions are prime examples of violations of the principles of separation of church and state.
When did so many Americans get to the point where they do longer believe in the Constitution, in the Declaration of Independence, in the ideals that have served us well for over 200 years? How did we get to this point where a country that was founded to get away from a king’s command over the people’s lives seems on the brink of embracing this type of authoritarian leadership?
Maybe we need look no further than eliminating civics from our school curricula. Maybe we now have a population that does not understand the Constitution. A population that does not understand the concept of three co-equal branches of government or the separation of church and state. A population that has not learned from history but is willing to make the same mistakes that lead to ruin for other countries. A population that cannot or will not think for itself but is spoon-fed, told what to believe even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
This is not the America I know and love. Please wake up, America!
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Casey He
When the Supreme Court fails, are states' high courts an answer?
Oct 16, 2024
Toscano is an attorney and a former Democratic leader in the Virginia House of Delegates. He is the author of “Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives.”
Montana and Kansas are typically viewed as politically conservative states. Donald Trump won both in 2016 and 2020 by hefty margins, and Democrats rarely prevail in presidential contests there. Bill Clinton was the last to win in Big Sky Country in 1992, and Lyndon Johnson was the last Democrat to take Kansas’ electoral votes in 1964.
While Democrats in both states can win statewide contests, their legislatures have been controlled by Republicans for decades, and now hold supermajorities in both chambers.
But there are cracks in these ruby red monoliths, if only because their state constitutions include provisions that make conservatives wince and provide progressives with opportunities to protect and expand rights in ways that the present Supreme Court would be unlikely to embrace. More importantly, Montana and Kansas are not alone; state constitutions across the nation include numerous, explicit rights not found in the U.S. Constitution.
As the Supreme Court and many federal courts appear increasingly hostile to constitutional challenges to conservative legislation passed by red legislatures, progressive legal advocates are looking for new options, and state courts have become one of them.
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Climate, voting and reproductive rights
Montana and Kansas courts recently have shown new and creative ways to analyze issues in state-specific ways, reaching decisions that would rarely be issued by our highest court. For instance, this Supreme Court consistently rules against efforts to protect the environment or fight climate change. But only last year, a Montana district court decided in Held v. State that the state had violated its Constitution in failing to consider the impact of greenhouse gas emissions in its environmental reviews.
Supreme Court decisions, most notably its 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, have undermined voting rights for decades and emboldened conservative state legislatures to pass countless bills that restrict the franchise. But this spring, the Montana Supreme Court in Democratic Party et. al. v. Jacobsen, struck down four measures enacted by the Legislature in 2021 that would have ended same-day voter registration, imposed restrictive voter ID requirements and curtailed absentee ballot access. The court ruled the laws violated “the fundamental right to vote provided to all citizens by the Montana Constitution.”
Finally, the present U.S. Supreme Court decimated federal reproductive rights by striking down Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But the Kansas Supreme Court, after holding in 2019 that reproductive rights were protected under the state Constitution, recently reaffirmed this view, issuing two 5-1 opinions in July striking down legislation that undermined those rights.
Redistricting
In these and other cases popping up around the country, state courts are embracing constitutional reasoning not recently seen in the federal courts. Redistricting is another example.
The 2019 Supreme Court decision Rucho v. Common Cause held that partisan gerrymanders could not be challenged in federal courts, thereby giving legislatures the green light to enact any plan they wanted. They acted with a vengeance, producing extremely partisan plans, especially in red states.
But buried in the Rucho case was language that opponents of hyperpartisanship took to heart. The court wrote that “[p]rovisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply.” And that was precisely what high courts in Alaska, Maryland, Ohio, New York and Wisconsin did, using their state constitutions to overturn hyperpartisan and racially discriminatory redistricting plans, and forcing legislatures to redraw their maps.
Just this month, the Utah Supreme Court argued that the Legislature’s efforts to undermine a 2018 voter-approved independent redistricting process would not likely pass constitutional muster.
Making different arguments
These cases are not only important in themselves, but for how the decisions were reached. The Held ruling is arguably the first time an American court has concluded that a law to promote fossil fuels violates a constitutional right, and provides encouragement for similar actions in places such as Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, all of which include so-called “green amendments” in their state charters.
The Jacobson case is even more significant. Not only was it issued by Montana’s highest judicial panel, but the court’s analysis of voting rights under state law was dramatically more expansive than that used by today’s U.S. Supreme Court.
Finally, the recent Kansas decision on abortion found that the Legislature unconstitutionally restricted a fundamental right under the state Constitution “to personal autonomy, which includes a pregnant person’s right to terminate a pregnancy.”
State constitutions are different
Many Americans know little about these state court decisions, and focus instead on the glitz and drama associated with the U.S. Supreme Court. In the process, however, they neglect the vast majority of legal cases heard by state courts that involve some of our most important rights and liberties. Why are these courts potentially fertile ground for progressives?
First, state constitutions include a plethora of rights that are not found in our U.S. charter. The U.S. Constitution, for example, provides no explicit right to vote — but 49 state constitutions guarantee the franchise. The federal Constitution does not mention education and the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1973 that unequal educational funding is not a violation of our federal charter. Many state constitutions, however, include explicit language making education not only the state’s “paramount duty,”, but that it must be “fair,” “equal” and of “high quality.”
Our U.S. Constitution has yet to incorporate the Equal Rights Amendment, but 22 states now include gender equality provisions in theirs. Three state constitutions include explicit protections for the environment and several states will consider adding such provisions to their constitutions this fall. Eleven state constitutions include “rights of privacy” that are missing from the U.S. Constitution and provide an opportunity to challenge draconian anti-abortion statutes, even in the most conservative of states.
Second, while the U.S. Constitution often describes rights in the negative, e.g. “Congress shall make no law …” or “no state shall …,” state constitutions are designed both to protect citizens from governmental excesses and impose affirmative duties upon legislatures and the executive. The Pennsylvania Constitution, for example, states: “Elections shall be free and equal; and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.” This is not just a right of citizens, but the duty of government to protect it.
When created, the U.S. Constitution represented a patchwork of compromises born out of the differences between the various states at the time of our founding. The document is relatively short, and its clauses were designed to knit together diverse states to form a national government. Our Bill of Rights was added largely out of concern that, without it, ratification would fail. And most of those provisions were borrowed from the state constitutions that existed prior to ratification.
Numerous scholars suggest that state constitutions had a different focus than their federal counterpart adopted in 1789. They were written primarily to protect rights and support majoritarianism. There is no equivalence to the Electoral College in the state charters and no lifetime tenure for state judges. State constitutions are more easily amended; many even allow citizens to initiate changes through ballot initiatives rather than wait for their legislatures to act. Unlike the federal system, states require elections for numerous key positions, from attorneys general to secretaries of state to supreme court judges.
The power of citizens is the central focus of these charters.
Voting rights
The most significant examples of state courts going farther than the Supreme Court are found in the voting rights arena. And it is in this area where the impact of state courts may be most felt in this fall’s election.
Many Americans fail to realize that most laws and procedures involving the vote are determined by state governments. In decades past, those laws were rigorously scrutinized by our Supreme Court. But no longer! Over the last 50 years, the Supreme Court’s protection of voting rights has declined markedly. As conservatives gained control of the court, they began to water down the standards used to judge these cases, making the protection of the vote in federal courts increasingly problematic.
Voting rights cases at the federal level were previously reviewed under the standard known as “strict scrutiny.” This approach applied to challenges of laws or practices that either affected certain protected classes such as racial minorities or religious groups, or burdened a fundamental right such as the right of free expression.
In determining the constitutionality of these acts, the “strict scrutiny” standard of review requires the government to show that there is a "compelling governmental interest" in enacting the law or procedure, and that the measure is narrowly tailored to meet that goal. When this standard is used, it is tantamount to creating a presumption that the act is unconstitutional, a huge burden for government to overcome for the law or procedure to be constitutional.
That began to change, however, with two cases in the last century, Anderson v. Celebrezze in 1983, and Burdick v. Takushi in 1992. The Supreme Court now uses a standard for most voting rights cases called the Anderson-Burdick balancing test. Under this approach, only when a law “severely burdens” the right to vote will “strict scrutiny” be used. Instead, the court balances the degree of voter inconvenience against the stated governmental purpose. A legislature only need show a generalized need for a measure and that it does not overly burden the electorate, a much easier standard to meet.
Since the right to vote is not explicitly found in the U.S. Constitution, it became easier for the Supreme Court to avoid considering it a fundamental right for which strict scrutiny would apply. The result has been fewer successful federal constitutional challenges to changes in voting procedures.
The perils of lockstepping
Some state high courts simply followed the Supreme Court in applying Anderson-Burdick to their voting rights challenges, a practice that court watchers call “lockstepping.” When state courts lockstep, they adopt the perspective and precedents of federal courts rather than engage in an independent analysis of the state constitutional claim.
In 2024, for example, the Idaho Supreme Court rejected the use of a “strict scrutiny” standard of review as it ruled that prohibiting student IDs as voter identification did not violate the state Constitution. And the Kansas Supreme Court has held that laws on voting are not subject to strict scrutiny.
But other state courts have shown greater independence. This is what the Montana court did in Jacobsen, finding that “the Anderson-Burdick balancing test gives undue deference to state legislatures,” and that strict scrutiny should apply to laws that impinge on the fundamental right to vote.
Similarly, several other states have refused to lockstep the U.S. Supreme Court when considering hyperpartisan redistricting.
The Supreme Court has defined those plans as “political” and not subject to rigorous judicial review. Some states have not taken this view, preferring instead to look specifically at their constitutions for guidance. A recent analysis by Emily Lau at the University of Wisconsin argues that 27 states show a willingness to apply strict scrutiny to restrictive voting laws. When state courts lockstep, they fail to exercise their responsibility to check and balance the legislature — and issue more conservative decisions as a result.
Such approaches are increasingly being criticized by legal scholars across the political spectrum as a dereliction of duty to examine state constitutional provisions that protect and enhance our rights.
More than 70 percent of election litigation in 2022 occurred in state courts, and progressives have won their share of victories in their efforts to beat back hundreds of measures passed by Republican-controlled legislatures that would make voting more difficult. Much voting rights litigation is already occurring in anticipation of this fall’s election, especially in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, where almost 20 cases are on the docket.
Many of these cases have been brought by Republican state parties and their allies to sow dissent about the integrity of our elections. They involve issues ranging from whether the handbook for the local election officials is lawful (Arizona) to the permissibility of drop boxes (Wisconsin) to how long after Election Day mail-in ballots can be counted (Nevada, Pennsylvania). And we can expect more, especially if the election is close.
What’s Next? Constitutions and courts as contested terrain.
The full story of state constitutions and their role in defending democracy has yet to be written. Much will depend on the judges who are producing the opinions, and their degree of accountability. How those judges are selected will be key. Elections will play a major role; almost one-half of our states allow the public to directly choose state supreme court judges or vote in elections that allow them to retain a seat to which they were previously appointed.
Beyond judicial selection, citizens in 17 states have the ability to amend their constitution directly through ballot initiatives, and are increasingly doing so. Some 11 states, for example, have abortion rights initiatives on the ballot this fall.
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The tangled threads of race, religion and power have long defined the anti-abortion movement.
Paul Hennessy/Anadolu via Getty Images
Abortion, race and the fracturing of the anti-abortion movement
Oct 16, 2024
Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision sent shockwaves through the very soul of America, shattering the fragile peace that once existed around the issue of abortion. But amid this upheaval, a quiet reckoning is taking place within the anti-abortion movement itself — a reckoning that lays bare the tangled threads of race, religion and power that have long defined this struggle.
To truly understand this moment, we must first confront the roots of the anti-abortion movement as we know it today. It is a movement born mainly of the white evangelical Christian right, which found its voice in opposition to Roe v. Wade in the tumultuous decades of the 1970s and ‘80s. For many conservative evangelicals, the issue of abortion became a rallying cry, a bulwark against the perceived threats to traditional authority and values.
Yet this history sits in uneasy tension with the movement's professed commitment to the sanctity of all human life. It is a dissonance that grows harder to ignore as the movement itself becomes more multiracial, more multifaith. Today, increasing numbers of Black and Latino Christians stand as anti-abortion witnesses, driven by a potent mix of religious conviction and deep concern over the disproportionate impact of abortion in their communities. These voices are calling the movement to account, forcing a reckoning with its racial blindspots and its often-unexamined alliance with a conservative agenda that has all too often devalued Black and brown lives.
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At the same time, the goals of the anti-abortion movement have grown more politically charged. In the aftermath of Dobbs, many states have enacted near-total abortion bans, with no allowance for rape or incest. These laws have sparked outrage even among some conservatives, who feel the movement has lost sight of its earlier emphasis on finding common ground to reduce abortions through supporting women and families.
This is not merely an academic question. The answer will have real-world consequences for abortion access, for racial justice and for the very health of our democracy. It demands introspection and courageous conversations about some uncomfortable truths that have long divided us. For courageous conversations to happen, curated space is required where the diverse voices within the anti-abortion movement can be truly heard, particularly those from communities of color. This means more than just tokenizing their presence — it means actively centering their stories, perspectives and wisdom.
Second, the movement's fraught history must be faced head-on without recourse to platitudes or evasions. To do so means grappling with how opposition to abortion became intertwined with resistance to racial and gender equality and how this legacy continues to shape the movement's priorities in the present day.
Third, a more expansive definition of "pro-life" encompassing economic justice, racial equity and the inherent dignity of all human life is demanded. A more expanded or nuanced understanding should advocate for policies that support vulnerable families, address the racial disparities that have long plagued us and promote a more just and equitable society for all.
Finally, we must dialogue with those who disagree with us as our human peers, driven by sincere convictions and a shared desire to do what is right. It means listening actively, speaking humbly and seeking common ground wherever possible, even as we stand firm in our principles.
Ironically, in this moment of upheaval lies an opportunity to forge a new path that is more inclusive, more just and more truly committed to the flourishing of all human life. The question is, will we dare have the necessary courageous conversations?
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