Nevada is moving to a ‘top-down’ voter registration system. What does that mean for the election?

Prior to last month’s rollout, election administrators from each of Nevada’s 17 counties utilized a ‘bottom-up’ approach, in which they maintained their own list of registered voters that would then be transmitted to the state.

The state of Nevada is implementing a new so-called “top-down” system to manage voter registration data ahead of this November’s election that officials say will help safeguard the vote and provide increased transparency into elections data. 

Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar’s office officially launched the first phase of the Voter Registration and Election Management Solution (VREMS) in August, which establishes a centralized, statewide database of voter registration information. Prior to VREMS, clerks and election administrators from each of Nevada’s 17 counties utilized a “bottom-up” approach, in which they maintained their own list of registered voters that would then be transmitted to the state. 

In a press release announcing the launch Wednesday, Aguilar, who is a Democrat, said the transition to VREMS will modernize the state’s election process and shed more transparency while keeping voter rolls up-to-date and streamlining in-person voting. 

“All eyes are on Nevada this year – it’s more important than ever that Nevada is at the forefront of election security and transparency,” Aguilar said in the statement. “I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – Nevada runs some of the most safe, secure and accessible elections in the country.” 

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Transition to the VREMS system was set forward by a 2021 bill signed into law by then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, which required the system to go live prior to the 2024 general election (lawmakers in last year’s Democratic-majority legislature also allocated $30 million to ensure a timely rollout). It was one of several elections-related bills enacted during that legislative session that, among other things, made same-day voter registration and universal mail voting permanent throughout the state. 

The only exception to the rollout of the VREMS system is Clark County, the state’s largest, which is home to about 70% of Nevada’s population and accounts for 1.7 million of the state’s 2.3 million registered voters. Clark County used the new system starting with the presidential preference primaries in February, but won’t merge its voter database with the state’s until 2025.

With the Nov. 5 general election just 54 days away, Nevada’s early voting period will run from Oct. 19 to Nov. 1, during which voters can visit a polling place in-person, submit the mail-in ballot provided to them by Aguilar’s office, or drop that mail ballot off at an official drop box. Voters will also have the option to cast their vote on Election Day. 

During a public demonstration of the new system, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin said the hope with top-down approach is that it will help officials maintain voter history as well as reduce the time needed to validate new voter registration applications. 

“If a voter voted for 20 years in one county, and then moved to an adjacent county, even a few miles away, they were essentially starting a brand-new voter registration,” Wlaschin said of the old “bottom-up” system. “All of the records that were on-file in that previous county, all of their examples of their signatures and other information, their vote history, was ultimately canceled in that previous county, and the new county started fresh.” 

That can be especially problematic in a primarily vote-by-mail state like Nevada, Wlaschin said, because signature verification is the chief mechanism for validating a voter’s identity. 

“Going into this new top-down system, all of that information will be carried over with those voters,” Wlaschin continued. “The history, the information, that will help add and greatly enhance not only security, but transparency across the process, from voter registration through the conduct of an election.” 

What will it look like for voters? 

Rollout of the VREMS system will also introduce new technology that voters will have to interact with. 

Those voting in-person will now use a tablet enabled with a program called Poll Pad, which will be used to complete the check-in process before that person casts their ballot. For existing registered voters, they will be greeted by a poll worker, who will find that person using voter roll information. 

Upon first using the Poll Pad, it will remind voters that casting more than one ballot is a crime before presenting personal information that voters can either confirm or correct, such as name, date of birth, or party affiliation. The Poll Pad will also remind voters they can surrender their mail ballot at the precinct, or will ask them to affirm that they will destroy the mail-in ballot and not use it. 

Once that information is confirmed, a poll worker will conduct signature verification of the voter, so that the autograph provided matches the one kept on file by election officials. 

“If the poll worker has any doubts about the signature, they will have —  if they believe it does not match —  they have several steps that they can take,” said David Delucia, manager of the VREMS Help Desk. “The first one, of course, is [to] answer some questions covering personal data which the voter can provide. They can provide the poll worker orally or in writing, other personal data, data which verifies their identity. And finally, they can provide the poll worker with proof of identification, such as a driver’s license (or) a military ID.” 

Finally, if those credentials are approved, the voter will be given either a digitally-encoded card or a painted activation card to access their ballot, depending on which county they are in. Once their ballot is completed, the system will refresh within 10 minutes to register that the person has voted, ensuring they are unable to cast duplicate ballots at other polling places. 

“That voter card … does not have any of their personal information on it,” Wlaschin said. “It strictly has the precinct to make sure that [voting] machine pulls up that precinct-specific ballot for that voter.” 

The process slightly changes for those heading to a polling place to register to vote: The poll worker checking in voters will verify that the person is not already registered to vote, and once verified, that person will be asked to provide a form of identification that will be entered into the state’s database. They will then be asked whether they are a US citizen, have resided in that county for at least 30 days, and have resided at the address they’ve listed for at least 10 days, before continuing with the rest of the process. 

One benefit to the system for new voters, Delucia said, is that addresses will be auto-populated by the Poll Pad system. If a person’s address is different from the one listed, that voter will be given a provisional ballot, which allows election officials to further verify that individual’s information. 

“This ensures that the precinct and the correct ballot they are supposed to vote with are correctly identified,” Delucia said. 

Republican support as well

With the implementation of VREMS, Nevada has become the 36th state in the US to implement a top-down registration system, while five states (New York, California, Ohio, Illinois and Tennessee) continue to administer their elections using a bottom-up system. Nine states, including Texas, Florida, and others, use a so-called hybrid system in which the state maintains its own list but large counties also maintain their own. 

Rollout of the VREMS system also comes weeks after Aguilar’s office announced a decrease in active registered voters, which, in a separate release this week, said counties were faced with an Aug. 6 deadline to complete routine maintenance of county-wide voter rolls, which includes removals because a voter has canceled their registration, has died, or has moved. That report noted a decrease of 76,524 active registered voters compared to the previous month, with the total number of registered Democratic voters decreasing by roughly 24,000 and Republicans by about 14,000. 

Among those celebrating the recent reforms are former Republican Gov. Bob List, who currently serves as co-chair of RightCount Nevada, a nonprofit that’s advocating for a Republican-led ballot measure that, if passed, would require voters to produce a form of identification prior to voting. Many voting rights groups, however, have long said ID requirements, when used in place of signature verification, can act as a barrier that may prevent low-income, homeless, or transient individuals from participating in elections.

“The recent elimination of these outdated voter rolls is a critical step in reinforcing our commitment to election integrity,” List said in a statement dated Friday. “It highlights the need for a clean and reliable electoral process and ensuring our voter rolls are accurate is absolutely essential in the effort to remove doubt from our voting systems.”

Election security has been a rallying cry for conservatives since the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump and allies repeatedly spread baseless falsehoods that widespread voter fraud “rigged” the outcome of the election — including in Nevada, where Trump lost by roughly 30,000 votes to President Joe Biden. 

Part of that disinformation campaign stemmed from the fact that it took Nevada election officials several days to tabulate preliminary results before a winner could be determined. Cecelia Heston, a spokesperson for the Aguilar’s office, told The Nevadan that VREMS on its own won’t speed up that tabulation process. 

But coupled with increased staffing capacity and a better understanding of the law dictating when officials can begin counting ballots, officials will be able to dispel potential claims of widespread fraud because unofficial results should be available sooner. 

“The new voter registration and election management system only enhances those safeguards and increases our transparency,” Aguilar added.