Nevada hosts meeting aimed at assuring election security in state

The Nevada’s Secretary of State’s office gathered community representatives today in a virtual meeting, educating leaders on the state’s new voter registration system to maintain high confidence in election security ahead of November. 

The informational meeting Friday gathered community members interested in learning more about The Voter Registration and Election Management Solutions, or VREMS, a system mandated by the 2021 state Assembly Bill 422. Representatives from political parties and advocacy groups, including the Nevada Democrats and Republicans, the ACLU and other organizations joined to understand how the system functions and why VREMS was chosen to serve Nevada’s election needs. 

VREMS is a “top-down” voter registration system that collects and stores a list of voter registration information. Before implementing the VREMS system, Nevada operated on a “bottom-up” voter-registration system, where each county maintained its own record of voter registrations, utilizing different systems and methods to do so. 

The lists maintained by counties would be sent daily to the Secretary of State’s office, who would compile a statewide list, as required by federal law. County election officials are still responsible for upkeeping registration information for voters in their jurisdictions, but the centralized system allows them to coordinate with state officials easier. 

Nevada is one of the last states to have maintained a “bottom-up” voter registration system, as over 30 states already use the top-down system. And while Clark County has already been utilizing VREMS since before the presidential preference primary in February, many of the other 16 counties were using other systems. 

During the meeting, deputy secretary of state for elections Mark Wlaschin emphasized one of the biggest benefits to switching to the top-down system would be easier aggregation of voter data. The long-term benefits of the better analysis VREMS allows could include things like readjustments of polling locations more acutely tuned to voters’ needs and easier registration for those moving to different counties. 

“Especially with the transition of Nevada to a vote-by-mail state, there were some security elements where examples of signatures that we could have used for years and years back did not transfer over to the new county,” Wlaschin said. “Going into this new top-down system, all of that information will be carrying over with those voters.” 

But even as the system is implemented across all 17 counties, Wlaschin reminded attendees of the meeting the work to ensure a smooth transition is far from over. While Clark County has already been operating on the VREMS system, merging its voter database — the largest in the state — with the rest of Nevada’s will take longer than other counties’. 

“This is not a victory lap,” Wlaschin said. “There’s still work to be done. This has been a long and very important project that we’ve been working on, but the reality is, there are subsequent phases that need to be done.”