RNC, Nevada GOP lawsuit claims voter roll inconsistencies in Nevada

LAS VEGAS — State and national Republican organizations filed a lawsuit against Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and other election officials on Monday, alleging inconsistencies in the state’s voter rolls.

The Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party assert in the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court that Aguilar and several county clerks and registrars — including Clark County Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo — has failed to maintain accurate voter rolls and is not complying with the National Voter Registration Act.

“Election integrity starts with clean voter rolls, and that’s why the National Voter Registration Act requires state officials to keep their rolls accurate and up-to-date,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement. “Securing clean voter rolls in Nevada is a critical step towards ensuring that it will be easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

The lawsuit makes similar accusations that the RNC made in a December letter to Aguilar, alleging three Nevada counties — Douglas, Lyon and Storey — have more registered voters than adult citizens over 18, and that five other counties — Carson City, Churchill, Clark, Eureka and Washoe — have what it called “suspiciously high rates” of registered voters. At that time, the committee demanded the secretary of state respond within 45 days and correct the alleged violations within 90 days, or else it would proceed with legal action.

In its January response, the state rebuffed those claims, arguing that the data RNC was using to determine the validity of the state’s voter registration records was like “comparing apples to orangutans,” and that the RNC’s analysis was made using incomparable data.

The attorney general’s office, representing the secretary of state, argued there is no data set that would adequately determine whether registration rates and the eligible voting population are mismatched. It also highlighted the procedures the state goes through to ensure the voter rolls are properly maintained, such as working with the Nevada Registrar of Vital Statistics every day to update counties every time a voter is identified as deceased.

The Nevada secretary of state’s office referred the Las Vegas Review-Journal to its response letter when reached out to for a comment on Monday.

Lawsuit details

The Nevada Republican Party — whose leaders have long cast doubt on Nevada’s election’s processes and are some of the so-called “fake electors” who submitted false electoral documents declaring Donald Trump the winner of the Silver State — touted evidence of past election fraud in Nevada’s elections, pointing to the cases of Donald Kirk Hartle, convicted of voting for his dead wife in 2020, and Craig Frank, convicted of voting in two states in the 2016 election.

The lawsuit said the RNC and its members worry that what they see as the state’s failure to maintain voter rolls “undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for ineligible voters or voters intent on fraud to cast ballots.”

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