Committee hears bill to require 24-hour mail-ballot processing and create voter-access grant fund

The Nevada Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections heard testimony on Assembly Bill 534 on Sunday, a proposal from Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar to change portions of Nevada Revised Statutes related to ballot processing, petition verification and a new voter-access grant program.

Chief Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel De Guerra, joined by Deputy for Elections Mark Voloshin, told the committee the bill would require election officials in the state’s largest counties to begin processing mail ballots within 24 hours of receipt and would include a regulatory waiver process for counties unable to meet that deadline. "We have a duty and obligation to our voters to ensure that ballots are processed and ready to be tabulated in a timely manner," De Guerra said, adding the bill also standardizes timelines for verifying petitions and creates a voter access program in the Secretary of State’s office to receive gifts, grants and donations for distribution to county, local and tribal governments.

The provision to allow counties to delay the start of signature verification for initiative petitions under a narrow, recent-window buffer was described by De Guerra as preserving petitioners' ability to file while giving busy clerks latitude to begin verification later in the statutorily allowed period. "It does not change the amount of time that the clerks have to review. All it does is let them wait a little bit longer before they start that clock," he said.

County election officials described operational constraints in implementing a 24-hour processing requirement. Ashley Kennedy, representing Clark County, said Clark saw historic turnout in the 2024 general election — more than 1,000,000 voters — and that about 43 percent (roughly 443,000) voted by mail. Clark invested about $1.9 million to expand capacity, Kennedy said, and estimated that processing a mail ballot lifecycle (verification, signature matching, sorting and prepping for tabulation) takes about 11 hours for every 10,000 ballots. Clark’s maximum daily processing capacity is about 50,000 mail ballots, she said; on election day the county received roughly 454,000 mail ballots via drop boxes and another 19,000 from the post office, and the county completed tabulation of mail ballots received on election day by the end of the following day.

Washoe County’s government affairs liaison, Cadence Matevich, said Washoe has been in discussions with the Secretary of State’s office and expects operational impacts similar to Clark. Matevich told the committee that processing mail ballots requires space and staff and that meeting a 24-hour standard could force double shifts and additional costs for a county that is space-constrained. Both counties welcomed the proposed waiver process but cautioned it must be workable and transparent.

Opponents at the hearing focused primarily on the bill’s language establishing a voter-access grant program and on other specific statutory changes. Janine Hanson, state chair of the Independent American Party, and Joshua Skaggs, legislative affairs director for the Nevada Republican Party, both said they support some amendments (including removal of provisions allowing electronic voting in jails) but urged stricter limits and transparency for the grant program. Hanson said provisions in sections 69.4 and 69.6 that allow the Secretary of State to accept "any donation, gift, grant [or] bequest" and broadly determine eligible projects were too open-ended. Skaggs warned of outside influence and called the fund a potential "pot of money," urging donor disclosure, audits and restrictions on ideological funding.

Other speakers raised additional concerns. Callers and public-commenters argued against a proposed strict definition of "personal knowledge" for voter challenges (citing sections 24 and 33) that they said would make legitimate challenges impossible unless a challenger had direct, eyewitness knowledge. Several commenters criticized the renaming of provisional ballots to "conditional ballots" and questioned potential costs to reprint materials. Civil-society and academic speakers asked for stronger, more specific post-election audit standards and longer retention for ballots and records; Janette Dean urged more targeted hand-count audits and longer preservation periods.

In response to claims about algorithmic manipulation of votes, De Guerra told the committee, "There is no algorithmic switching of votes in Nevada or anywhere else in the country. Our elections are safe and secure. There has never been widespread voter fraud in the state of Nevada or across the country." He also noted the voter-access program language was developed in consultation with Assemblymember Lisa Krasner and said the Secretary of State’s office has reverted about $14 million to the general fund in the last biennium.

The hearing closed with no committee vote. Chair Orenshall thanked staff and participants and noted further work on the bill and its regulatory components — including the waiver process — would be necessary if the measure moves forward.