Looking for William Sitton at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas? He doesn’t live there anymore.
In fact, he doesn’t live anywhere anymore. He’s dead.
“William Sitton passed away last year. I know that for a fact,” a corrections official told Lauren Bis, director of communication and engagement for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF).
So, it’s curious why Nevada elections officials continued to list the late William Sitton on the local voter rolls earlier this year when the decedent clearly won’t be voting anytime soon.
It’s downright alarming that hundreds of questionable addresses remain on Nevada’s voter rolls, and elections officials in this pivotal swing state appear to be doing nothing to clean up the list. In a rematch of the 2020 presidential election in which Democrat challenger Joe Biden squeezed out a narrow victory over Republican President Donald Trump in the Silver State, every vote will be scrutinized.
Particularly in a state that automatically mails a ballot to every active registrant on the voter rolls.
“Nevada election officials are clearly failing to investigate and fix errors relating to commercial addresses on the voter roll, and that’s why we’re drawing attention to this issue so election officials will see this evidence that they can’t refute and start to take action to fix and clean the voter roll,” Bis says on a stunning new investigative video produced by PILF to document the long list of bad addresses.
‘I’m Looking for Ronald Phelps’
The election integrity public interest law firm tracked data from the Nevada secretary of state’s office, which in the 2022 midterms reported 95,556 ballots sent to undeliverable, or “bad” addresses. PILF investigators documented commercial addresses purported to be the residences of registered voters, confirming on video that the individuals did not live where they reported residing.
“In Nevada, by the state law, you are required to be registered where you actually live, where you sleep. Not where you work, not at a P.O. Box. So we’re trying to get elections officials to enforce the law,” Bis says in the video.
Bis showed up on a lot of doorsteps around Las Vegas, the Silver State’s largest city and a bastion of Democrat voters. She was greeted with a lot of quizzical looks from employees at the casinos, fast food restaurants, retailers, post offices, funeral homes, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, and jails where registered voters — at least according to Nevada’s dirty voter rolls — “resided.”
“I’m looking for Ronald or William Phelps,” Bis says to a bartender wearing a “Tacos por favor” T-shirt at a local watering hole on North Nellis Boulevard in Vegas.
“I don’t know who that is,” the barkeep replies.
“So, they don’t live here?” Bis asks.
“Uh, at the bar? No,” the bartender says, chuckling. She’s clearly amused by the question.
It sounds absurd, people apparently listing their residential address — their voting address — at a bar. But this is serious stuff on the election integrity front, especially in a state accused of keeping “impossibly high” voter registration numbers, a state that allows late-arriving ballots to be counted long after Election Day.
‘Worst Way to Run an Election’
As The Federalist reported last month, in Clark County alone, home to Las Vegas, nearly 40,000 mail ballots that arrived in the days after voting supposedly ended in the 2022 election were counted, making up roughly 5 percent of the county’s total ballot count. In Washoe County, Nevada’s second-most populated county, the extended ballot count accounted for nearly 3 percent of the total votes.
Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt led Democrat incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto on election night but eventually lost by less than 8,000 votes statewide, a fragment of the total ballots that arrived late.
“The worst problem with Nevada’s election is they automatically mail a ballot to every active registrant on the voter roll, and that is just the worst way to run an election,” Bis said. “You have to have almost completely, 100 percent accurate voter rolls if you’re going to run an election in the mail. As evidenced by what we are seeing today, Nevada is going to be sending ballots to improper addresses and we’re hoping to have that fixed before the 2024 presidential election.”
A close second challenge to election integrity has to be the state’s polluted voter rolls. A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party alleges Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, and five county election officials violated federal election law via “inordinately high voter registration rates.” In three counties, the lawsuit claims, registration rates exceed 100 percent of the total number of voting-eligible adults.
Democrats accuse Republicans of using inaccurate data in filing the complaint, which alleges the secretary of state failed to make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
Asked about the nearly 96,000 ballots automatically sent to undeliverable addresses in 2022, the secretary of state’s office told KOLO in Reno that Nevada has a fairly large transient population.
‘Hard Evidence’
The Public Interest Legal Foundation recently filed a petition to force Washoe County officials to investigate and fix commercial addresses on the voter roll. In Washoe County, investigators found registered voters with addresses at liquor stores, empty lots, and even the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
“Petitioners sought Respondent’s compliance with state law regarding the accuracy of the statewide voter list through investigations of specific addresses for accuracy. Respondent has not acted,” states the petition, filed in Nevada’s 2nd Judicial District Court. “Petitioners have no other remedy at law and herein seeks a writ of mandamus ordering Respondent to investigate possible commercial addresses.”
The Foundation is representing Fred Kraus, a Nevada voter.
PILF has been warning election officials about the problem since before the 2020 election, the law firm says.
Washoe County elections officials did not return The Federalist’s request for comment.
“For years Nevada election officials have ignored hard evidence of commercial addresses on the voter roll,” J. Christian Adams, president of PILF, said in a press release. “We are asking the court to force Nevada election officials to investigate and resolve any improper commercial addresses on the voter roll. Nevada must have accurate voter rolls. Otherwise, some of these liquor stores and tattoo parlors will receive ballots in the mail.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Comments are closed.