Election Integrity NonProfit Files Writ To Clean Voter Rolls in Clark County

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has filed a petition for mandamus (see below) to force Clark County election officials, specifically Registrar Lorena Portillo, to investigate and fix commercial addresses on the county’s voter roll.

This is the second lawsuit the Foundation has filed in Nevada related to  commercial addresses that need to be investigated and fixed. Last month, the Foundation filed a petition for mandamus to force Washoe County election official, Cari-Ann Burgess, to investigate commercial addresses on the county’s voter roll.

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.

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.

Drew Johnson, the republican challenger to Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) in Nevada’s third congressional district, recently exposed that a person in the swing district is registered to vote at Larry Flynt’s Hustler Strip Club.

UPDATE: There's a person registered to vote in my district using a Hustler strip club as their home address:
-Other than his voter info, there's no proof that he exists.
-His phone # was most recently registered to a professor in Rochester, NY. The # is now disconnected. pic.twitter.com/BlyDPKhlvh

— Drew Johnson (@DrewForNevada) June 19, 2024

In a 2020 investigation, PILF found 223 Clark County mail ballot 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.

Prior to the 2020 election, PILF has been notifying Nevada election officials about commercial addresses on the voter roll. 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.”

“In Clark County, people are registered to vote from strip clubs, casinos, gas stations, and more crazy addresses where it appears no one could reasonably live,” said PILF President, J. Christian Adams. “We are asking the court to force Nevada election officials to investigate any improper commercial addresses on the voter roll. We must have this fixed before the 2024 election. Otherwise, some of these strip clubs and casinos will receive ballots in the mail.”