Election workers inspect mail-in ballots in the count room at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022.
Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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An audit of the Clark County Election Department’s handling of mail ballots during the 2022 general election concluded that election officials followed state law when processing ballots.
The report, which the Clark County Audit Department published last week, also made suggestions to enhance the process in future elections. The department serves as an independent agency that reports directly to the county manager.
Officials during the audit “observed conditions that do not rise to the level of an audit finding, nor represent any deficiencies of the Election Department,” but otherwise represented small steps the county can take to increase voter awareness and education surrounding the completion and submission of mail ballots.
Among them: better verbalizing the process in which mail ballots are counted. Last year’s election marked the first following the passage of Assembly Bill 321 from the 2021 legislative session that standardized mail voting across the state, but also introduced the labor-intensive process of accurately issuing, processing and counting ballots for all eligible voters.
For the 2022 election in Clark County, there were roughly 1.3 million mail ballots sent to voters, with 340,000 counted. That means about 74% of mail ballots sent in the weeks leading up to the election were either surrendered, rejected, returned undeliverable or simply discarded by voters.
But of the 340,000 mail-in ballots that were counted, more than 80,000 arrived at the Election Department either on or after Election Day. And even though state law allows ballots to be counted if they come in within four days following an election, the process “may create a false impression of untimely processing when in reality the department is processing the volume while following their procedures to ensure compliance with Nevada law.”
The audit further added that the Election Department generally does not process mail ballots on Election Day, as resources are more focused on voting centers and poll-closing procedures. On Election Day, nearly 147,000 voters in Clark County cast ballots at an election center. Another 196,000 cast their ballots in early voting.
“Once ballot processing starts back up, the department has to work through any unprocessed ballots, plus the ballots received on Election Day, plus the ballots that come in post-Election Day,” the audit report stated. “Overall, neither the county nor the Election Department (has) any control over state legislative requirements. These conditions point to the need to continue mail ballot voting education and the challenges that come with processing large volumes of returned mail ballots.”
Areas for improvement
The audit also found that additional voter education initiatives about when to send a ballot and how to properly mark a ballot would also prove beneficial.
Although a slip that shows voters how to properly mark their vote is included with mail ballots, more could be done to ensure ballots are decisive and easy to read, which ultimately cuts down on processing times and allows results to be counted more quickly.
“The onus is on the voter to properly mark their contest selections,” auditors said. “There may be instances where voters accidentally overvote a contest due to bad marksmanship. We believe there needs to be increased awareness on the importance of not having hesitation, stray marks or smudging on ballots/contest selections and properly correcting errors.”
Under state law, mail ballots are sent no later than 20 days before Election Day for in-state residents, and they must be postmarked by no later than Election Day and be received by 5 p.m. four days after the election to be included in the vote tallying.
The audit showed that 4,903 mail ballots were rejected for not meeting those legal requirements.
“Because these ballots are not able to be counted/processed under state law, it highlights the need to continue educational and outreach efforts to increase voter awareness around submission deadlines,” auditors wrote.
They gave an example in which a ballot was delivered by the U.S. Postal Service with a receipt that indicated it was mailed on Election Day, but not postmarked until the following day. That rendered the ballot ineligible to be counted.
The auditors nevertheless found no overarching problems in Clark County.
“While we found areas for improvement, Clark County voters can be confident that the Election Department processes mail ballots accurately and in accordance with Nevada law,” the audit stated.
Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar echoed the confidence, saying in a statement to the Sun that “Nevada’s elections are some of the most secure and accessible in the country. Clark County’s audit shows that voters appreciate choice in how they cast their ballot, whether it’s by mail or in person.”
While those 4,903 votes were ultimately not counted, that total was not enough to sway the outcome of any statewide race. Gov. Joe Lombardo bested Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak by more than 15,000 votes, and U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto defeated a challenge by Republican Adam Laxalt by 7,928 votes, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office, which is charged with running the state’s elections.
Other down-ballot statewide races had even larger margins.
Some Republicans continue to tout false claims of election irregularities following former President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election to Joe Biden, although Nevada election officials spent more than 125 hours investigating the claims and found no evidence to support claims of widespread election fraud in the state.
Trump pleaded not guilty last week to trying to overturn the results of the election and unsuccessful attempt to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power. Prosecutors say Trump schemed to enlist fake electors in six battleground states won by Biden — including Nevada — to submit false certificates to the federal government.
“Nevada is an incredibly important state in national politics, and voters have the expectation of seeing results in a timely manner,” Aguilar said. “I appreciate Clark County’s effort to identify where they can make process improvements to the execution of elections, and we look forward to working with them to ensure they have the capacity they need to get ballots counted as they arrive.”
The audit determined the election system used by the county allows supervisors to access so-called adjudicated ballots without additional authorization, which it considered to be a “high risk” lapse. A ballot is “adjudicated” when a voting machine is unable to determine the selection on a ballot so it needs human review, according to the audit.
The adjudication process accounts for instances in which a voter may fill out bubbles for multiple candidates running for the same office (called an overvote), crossing out an initial selection for another (called a correction) or so-called stray marks outside designated areas of a ballot. State law mandates that as part of the adjudication process, bipartisan teams of two review the contested ballot using scanned images of the ballot to determine any changes needed based on rules prescribed by the secretary of state’s office.
During last year’s election, 19,580 Clark County ballots went through the adjudication process. And while the audit found those adjudicated ballots were correctly handled, the voting system’s software allows the adjudication supervisor to review and make changes as it goes through the adjudication process. Since a supervisor works out of their own work station, a supervisor could, hypothetically, adjudicate a ballot outside of the “regular bipartisan team setting,” according to the audit.
The audit further found that the county had no process in place to review system logs to identify whether adjudicated ballots were being reviewed or modified by the adjudication supervisor. Those logs, however, were made available to auditors, who “found no votes appeared to be inappropriately modified by this position.”
To remedy the risk, the auditors recommended the Election Department create a team of bipartisan supervisors to review and make changes to adjudicated ballots and to review system logs after each election to ensure supervisors acted appropriately. Election Department officials responded to the recommendation by saying the supervisor would bring in a manager who is not of the same political party to review and document actions taken by the supervisor.
Team assignments for the adjudication of ballots are not documented, which the audit considered a separate, low-risk discrepancy. The bipartisan teams of two work on one computer to perform their duties, and there are usually four to six teams working during any given adjudication session, auditors found.
That work is done in “a secured area” where entry and exit are recorded on a paper log, and adjudication work is spot checked and under general supervision. Auditors said the computer systems used by adjudication teams were not connected to the county’s server network, and the election management system recorded any changes made to a ballot made through a non-editable log.
Changes are recorded under that computer’s username, however, that username is not unique to the workers posted at that terminal, the audit found. And while there is a record of who is in that room at any given time, there is no record on the computer.
That could create reduced accountability by not knowing who was working on specific assignments within the adjudication room, according to the audit. But this was rated a “low risk” because most discrepancies can be identified due to the existing protocols in place (i.e. small team sizes) and that all adjudication work observed by auditors was done correctly. Auditors also recommended making these logs requestable under open records laws.
Moving forward, elections officials said individual adjudicators will be required to sign in and out at workstations beginning at the beginning of each shift and anytime they move to a new station.
The audit uncovered an additional low-risk incident: The Election Department does not separately log the sum of signatures verified or the total population.
State law requires a daily audit of signatures verified by voting machines’ automatic signature verification. This audit requires the Election Department to review at least 1% of daily signatures verified by the voting equipment.
But the county’s equipment, meanwhile, is configured to generate 2% of the population signatures verified, per day, for daily auditing.
“The audit report includes a detailed list of signatures, however, the department does not separately document the sum of signatures verified or the total population,” auditors wrote in their findings. “NRS does not require this documentation. As such, we verified the audit by manually counting the signatures audited. The risk in this area is the additional employee time spent providing this information, should a third party request it.”
Having such information readily available would reduce staff research time and could double as a useful supervisory tool, the audit found. The audit recommended continuing the county’s work with programmers to include population size and sample size of the automatic signature matches required for auditing, and the county responded by committing to include those figures in future daily reports.
“The report found that the Election Department had instituted appropriate controls related to the processing of mail ballots,” Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa said via email. “While the report identified opportunities for improvement, the report confirmed that no inappropriate actions occurred in the processing of mail ballots.”
He continued: “Some of the recommendations have already been put into practice, such as updating the Automatic Signature Recognition report to include the total number of signatures verified at the top of each report.Other recommendations regarding additional reviews and documentation will be added to the mail ballot process moving forward.”
