Washoe County registrar outlines equipment, staffing and voter-roll work ahead of 2026; board hears plan to pilot CIS audit standards

Washoe County Registrar of Voters Andrew McDonald delivered a comprehensive update to the Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday detailing staffing, vote-center planning, mail-ballot processing improvements and outreach ahead of the 2026 election cycle.

"Washoe County Register of Voters is committed to safe, secure, transparent election administration," McDonald said, reading the office—s new mission statement that emphasizes accuracy, integrity and innovation. McDonald told the commission the office is budgeted for 19 full-time employees with two current vacancies and that it manages 344,335 active registered voters as of the Sept. 2 snapshot.

McDonald and deputies described operational changes since their February briefing: an upgraded mail-ballot sorter, plans to implement automatic signature verification (ASV) for 2026, a Teams-based shift-scheduling tool for ballot processing volunteers, and a new public-facing website redesign for ADA accessibility. Deputy Registrar Eddie Vetter said the mail-in processing team took advantage of hundreds of county staff volunteers during the 2024 general election, but noted that several county offices will have elections in 2026 and those staff may be unavailable to assist.

Deputy Registrar Reggie Greer presented a heat map the office used to evaluate where to site vote centers and explained the warehouse and equipment challenges: the ROV currently leases roughly 13,000 square feet of storage for nearly 3,000 voting machines and associated supplies and said the operations have outgrown the space. Greer said ballot scanning sometimes pauses to clear physical space, which slows processing and argued for larger storage and processing space to speed results.

The ROV reported that during the three 2024 elections it managed more than 393,000 validly cast ballots: about 164,000 (41.8 percent) in person and about 229,000 (58.2 percent) by mail. The office also processed more than 103,000 voter-registration updates during the 2024 cycle, recruited more than 1,000 poll workers, and deployed 186 vote centers over the cycle.

McDonald said the Center for Internet Security (CIS) has accepted Washoe County as a pilot jurisdiction to apply CIS—recognized controls and audits to election administration. Commissioner Andreola praised the pilot and asked McDonald to return with details and a CIS representative when available.

Public comment included praise from a speaker who observed early voting operations and chain-of-custody procedures in multiple polling places and urged the office to provide more timely ballot-receipt and ballot-count information to reduce voter anxiety. McDonald said the office is evaluating an AI call agent to handle frequent phone inquiries and hopes to reduce call volume and speed voter responses.

Commissioners asked for more granular reporting about the composition of in-person and mail ballots by party; McDonald provided quick estimates in the meeting and offered to follow up with exact counts. Commissioners expressed support for the ROV—s outreach to tribal governments, language-access initiatives (Wordly and LanguageLine) and the voter education pilot with Washoe County School District.

The board did not take formal action on ROV agenda items at the Sept. 9 briefing; McDonald said the office will return to the commission with several items later in the season including a potential voting-system contract extension, migration to a state mail-ballot print vendor, and interlocal agreements with the cities of Reno and Sparks.