Nevada's motor voter files missing

CARSON CITY -- Records apparently misfiled in the secretary of state's office is the reason Nevada never reported "motor voter" registration figures to the Federal Election Commission in May.

Pamela Crowell, deputy secretary of state for elections, said Wednesday she believes the voter numbers are in a box that has been mislabeled. Or it could be they have been mistakenly shipped to the state archives for storage.

The federal commission reported Wednesday about 7 million Americans have registered to vote since 1994 because of the "motor voter" law. It said this figure did not include Nevada, which didn't reply to the commission's questionnaire.

Once the state office finds the records, Crowell said a late report would be submitted for 1997-98.

The current figures for the first six months of this year show 34,712 people signed up to vote while registering their cars.

The federal agency said the number of registered voters nationwide rose from 124.6 million in 1994 to 136.6 million in 1998. But it also shows the percentage of those eligible to vote declined from 39 percent to 36 percent.

In Nevada in the 1998 election, 49 percent of those registered voted. But there is no breakdown of the number of people who were eligible who did not register nor vote.

Nevada has an estimated population, according to the state demographer's office, of 1.4 million adults. And voter registration is nearly 886,000, as of the end of May.

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