Mailers Sent by Postal Service to Nevada Voters Contain Incorrect Information

Mailers Sent by Postal Service to Nevada Voters Contain Incorrect Information
Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske speaks during an event in Las Vegas in 2016. (David Becker/Getty Images for Global Citizen)
Zachary Stieber
9/14/2020
Updated:
9/16/2020

Mailers sent by the U.S Postal Service (USPS) to Nevada voters this month contain incorrect information, Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske recently warned.

The mailers have already arrived at some homes and are due to arrive at others in the coming days, the Republican said in a statement.

Recommendations on the mailer include telling people to request a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 15 days before Election Day and advising them to add postage to the envelope used to return the ballot if needed.

“These recommendations are not accurate for Nevada voters,” the official said.

Under a bill passed by state lawmakers and signed by Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, every registered voter in the state will receive a mail-in ballot for the Nov. 3 election, meaning voters do not need to request a ballot.

Additionally, all envelopes for returning ballots are postage prepaid, meaning voters don’t need to add postage.

“The Secretary of State’s office was not made aware of the USPS postcard prior to it being mailed, nor was the office asked to provide input regarding the recommendations listed on the postcard,” Cegavske said in a statement.

Because of potential problems, President Donald Trump’s campaign last month sued the state of Nevada over the law that enabled mailing ballots to every voter.
A U.S. Postal Service (USPS) truck leaves a postal facility in Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 15, 2019. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
A U.S. Postal Service (USPS) truck leaves a postal facility in Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 15, 2019. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Trump has repeatedly criticized states that are mass-mailing ballots

“They should make people, if you register, if you want a solicited ballot, that’s where you ask for it,” he said during a rally in Minden over the weekend. “You have to sign papers. You get it because you can’t be there. That’s one thing. When they send 80 million ballots to people, they have no idea where they’re going. Actually, they probably do have a good idea where they’re going, and that’s our problem.”

Cegavske’s office has said the election will run smoothly, as have officials in other states turning to mail-in ballots.

Nevada officials struggled with conducting the June primary. In one county alone, Clark County, 223,000 mail-in ballots were never delivered, according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit legal firm focusing on election integrity.

“These numbers show how vote by mail fails. New proponents of mail balloting don’t often understand how it actually works,” the foundation’s general counsel J. Christian Adams said at the time.

“States like Oregon and Washington spent many years building their mail voting systems and are notably aggressive with voter list maintenance efforts. Pride in their own systems does not somehow transfer across state lines. Nevada, New York, and others are not and will not be ready for November.”

A small number of states, including Oregon and Washington, have held elections primarily by mail for years. Most others have not.

A Clark County spokesman told The Epoch Times via email that the ballots were returned “because those voters no longer reside at the address they provided when they registered to vote.”

“They have moved. This is a common way for us to discover someone has moved,” he said.

Ballots for the Nov. 3 election are being sent to different Nevada counties at different times. Most are being sent in late September or early October.

Clark County is the only county in the state that has not determined when the ballots will be sent out, according to Cegavske’s office.

As with every state, in-person voting is still allowed even as officials make an unprecedented push for mail-in voting. Early voting starts Oct. 17 and runs through Oct. 30. Voters who miss that period of time can vote as normal on Nov. 3.