This article has been updated to reflect a recent statement from PILF.

Last June, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed a petition of mandamus to compel Clark County election officials, specifically Registrar Lorena Portillo, to investigate and fix commercial addresses on the county’s voter roll. Prior to the writ being filed, Portillo refused. Under Nevada law, individuals are required to register to vote where they live. Additionally, state law requires election officials to perform voter list maintenance to ensure the voter roll is accurate.

Since before the 2020 election, PILF has been notifying Nevada election officials about commercial addresses on the voter roll. During their investigation they found voters registered at casinos, vacant lots, gas stations, strip clubs, warehouses, business parks, and fast food restaurants.

Late Friday, PILF announced Portillo complied and removed the commercial addresses, thereby avoiding litigation and complying with state law.

“Because of PILF’s lawsuit, Clark County was forced to investigate crazy addresses listed as residences on the voter roll including strip clubs, casinos, and gas stations,” said PILF President, J. Christian Adams. “Without this litigation, mail ballots would have gone to improper addresses. If Nevada is going to continue to run its elections by automatically mailing a ballot to every active registered voter, it needs to do a better job at identifying improper voter registrations.”

This was the second lawsuit the foundation has filed in Nevada related to commercial addresses that need to be investigated and fixed. In June, the foundation also filed a petition for mandamus to force Washoe County Interim Registrar Cari-Ann Burgess to investigate commercial addresses on the county’s voter roll.

The Globe reached out to PILF for comment and an update on Washoe County, the second largest county in Nevada (and a swing county that can make the difference in close elections).

Director of Communications and Engagement Lauren Bowman Bis replied, “Last week, the court denied Washoe’s motion to dismiss the case. A link to that order is here. As for your question about Clark’s addresses, they investigated all 90 commercial addresses we asked them to look into. We will be putting in a records request under the National Voter Registration Act to see the actions and results of the investigations. This lawsuit forced the county to act. The number of addresses in the Washoe lawsuit is 48. 

In a 2020 investigation, PILF found 223 Clark County mail ballots were delivered to the wrong address in the primary. In the 2020 presidential election, 92,000 ballots were sent to the wrong address in Clark County.

Follow-up investigations by the foundation in 2024 revealed hundreds of questionable addresses remain on the state’s voter roll.

According to data from the 2022 midterms provided by the Nevada Secretary of State, 95,556 ballots were sent to undeliverable or “bad” addresses and another 8,036 were rejected upon receipt. 2,133 were from registered Democrats; 2,307 were from Republicans; and, 3,596 were from Other. Another 1.2 million ballots never came back to officials for counting. In other words, 71.5 percent of mailed ballots were unaccounted for in the 2022 midterm election.

As The Globe previously reported, PILF published their review of a 2023 report issued by the Secretary of State that provides an accounting of mail ballots from the midterm 2022 election. The raw data shows, according to PILF’s President J. Christian Adams, that “Automatic mail ballots are a disaster and the Nevada numbers prove it.”

In summary of their review, PILF notes: “As states expand mail voting, Nevada’s 2022 midterm elections offer an alarming case study of close results as they relate to rejected, unreturned, and undeliverable ballots. Nevada’s U.S. Senate race was ultimately called four days later on a margin of 7,928 votes, which determined party control for the chamber. A total of 8,036 rejected ballots out of nearly 513,000 returned may not seem significant, but in this context, it is a reasonable question as to what can be done to reduce the failure rates.”