Nevada Activists Blast Elections Chief For Trying To ‘Discourage And Impede’ Legitimate Voter Roll Challenges
A grassroots organization is demanding to know why Nevada’s Democrat elections chief is limiting citizens’ ability to challenge potentially ineligible registrants on the state’s voter rolls.
In a letter sent to Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar on Sunday, Citizen Outreach Foundation President Chuck Muth questioned the rationale behind a memo issued by the secretary’s office to local election officials on Aug. 27 instructing them to refrain from complying with voter registrant challenges made under a specific provision of state law.
“If there are raised any doubts about the integrity of any elections in Nevada in November that turn out to be close, it won’t be because of ‘right-wing election deniers’ but because of your actions to thwart the legitimate efforts of our organization to assist with the obviously flawed current system of identifying and removing ineligible voters from the Active voter rolls,” Muth wrote.
As The Federalist previously reported, the Nevada-based Citizen Outreach Foundation (COF) aims to ensure accuracy within the state’s voter rolls through its Pigpen Project, which involves consultation with local election officials to identify individuals who are no longer eligible to remain on the Silver State’s voter registration lists. Muth previously told The Federalist that these local officials “have been extremely cooperative and helpful” in showing the group the correct procedures for filing challenges.
The Situation
In May, the Citizen Outreach Foundation filed roughly a dozen “test” challenges in Clark County under a provision of Nevada law known as Section 547 using data from the secretary of state’s office and the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address database. It also compared this information with the “official voter registration records of 15 other states.”
Section 547 mandates that electors who file an affidavit challenging a registrant’s eligibility must be “registered to vote in the same precinct as the person whose right to vote is [being] challenged” and that the challenge must be “based on the personal knowledge of the registered voter.” A separate provision of state law defines “personal knowledge” as used in Section 547 to mean “firsthand knowledge through experience or observation of the facts upon each ground that the challenge is based.”
The group’s May challenges were rejected on “the ground that the ‘personal knowledge’ requirement, as defined in the law, was not met; that personal knowledge of the official government data didn’t equate to ‘personal knowledge of the registered voter,’” according to Muth.
This prompted the COF to more closely analyze Section 535, which permits “any elector or other reliable person” to file challenges against registrants they have reason to believe are noncitizens or have moved to a different county or state with the “intention of remaining there for an indefinite time and with the intention of abandoning [their] residence in the county where registered” or registered in a different county or state. Unlike Section 547, however, this statute only requires challengers to affirm “that he or she has personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavit.”
Using the Section 535 provision, the COF filed challenges on July 29 contesting the eligibility of nearly 4,000 Nevada registrants whom it contends no longer live in the state.
Writing on behalf of Aguilar, Deputy Secretary of Elections Mark Wlaschin claimed in the Aug. 27 memo that the “personal knowledge” requirement under Section 535 should be interpreted in exactly the same way as the requirement in Section 547. He further instructed clerks to reject challenges made under the former section by organizations like COF that do not fulfill the latter’s definition of “personal knowledge.”
“It is the opinion of the Secretary of State that such challenges do not meet the requirement of ‘personal knowledge’ of facts supporting the challenge required by NRS 293.535 and 293.547,” Wlaschin wrote. “County clerks who receive these challenges should reject them and instruct challengers that personal knowledge gained through firsthand experience or observation of the facts relating to a voter’s eligibility is necessary to file a valid challenge under either statute.”
Wlaschin subsequently admitted that “‘personal knowledge’ is not explicitly defined under [Section 535] or implementing regulations,” but nonetheless claimed “the Secretary views the term to mean the same thing in both statutes.”
Muth maintained in his letter that the CFO’s challenges “have more than ‘substantially’ complied with the intent of the provisions of [the law in question] and that [the] directive to reject them is clearly based on a technical ‘informality’ that has no bearing on the facts set forth in [the] affidavits.”
NV SOS August Memo by The Federalist
Memo Aftermath
Muth told The Federalist he only learned of the Aug. 27 memo after having it flagged by a county official that day. Aguilar purportedly called him on Aug. 28 to discuss the matter.
While driving and unable to look at the directive at the time of the call, Muth contended that the Democrat secretary’s explanation of what the guidance entailed did not comport with what was included in the document. As described in Muth’s Sunday letter, Aguilar allegedly claimed the “purpose of the memo was to ask clerks/registrars to consult with their [district attorneys] to see if they have a differing opinion from [his] office’s interpretation of ‘personal knowledge’ as it pertains to Section 535 and forward their argument(s) to [his] office.”
“I thought maybe I missed something … [but] when I was able to sit down and read it a couple of hours later, none of that was in the memo itself,” Muth told The Federalist.
Muth said that while Wlaschin was not copied on the COF’s challenges electronically submitted on July 29, he was copied “on the subsequent public records requests related to those challenges, as well as all subsequent challenges” filed by the group. Documents obtained by The Federalist show that Wlaschin was, in fact, copied on challenges filed after July 29.
According to a memo the COF sent to Aguilar on Sept. 3, the group filed 34,222 additional challenges of allegedly “ineligible ‘moved’ voters” it claims remain on the state’s “active” rolls on Aug. 28. The CFO president noted in his Sunday letter that “some of the clerks who had promptly and properly processed our challenges that were submitted on July 29, 2024, have since advised that, in light of [the secretary’s] directive, they would no longer process subsequent challenges.”
Aguilar’s office did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment.
What This Means
Muth concluded his letter by noting how the Citizen Outreach Foundation has “gone above and beyond what is required to more than ‘substantially’ comply” with state law governing voter registration challenges. He also requested the Democrat secretary revoke his Aug. 27 guidance to election clerks before early voting begins.
“[Y]our efforts over the past nine months to discourage and impede our ability to assist the clerks/registrars in assuring our elections are secure from individuals who have become ineligible to vote in Nevada elections does not engender confidence,” he wrote. “But there’s still time for you to do the right thing.”
Speaking with The Federalist, Muth emphasized how the Aug. 27 directive effectively limits Nevadans’ ability to challenge potentially ineligible registrants on the state’s voter rolls. He cited two memos issued to local election officials by Aguilar’s office in March and April he contended “closed off two of [the] three ways for a citizen to be able to challenge the eligibility of a voter based on whether or not they still reside at the address where they registered to vote.”
The Aug. 27 memo effectively “closed off the final possibility of us being able to participate in cleaning up the voter rolls,” Muth said. “That’s why, at the end of my letter, I asked the secretary, ‘If we can’t do Sections 535 or 547, then what option is there?’”
As of Thursday morning, neither Aguilar nor his office have responded to Muth’s Sunday communique, according to Muth.
Citizen Outreach Foundation Sept. 8 Letter to Secretary Aguilar by The Federalist on Scribd
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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