On Friday, Citizen Outreach Foundation (COF), sponsor of the Pigpen Project to clean up the voter rolls in Nevada, filed a lawsuit (see below) against the clerk’s offices in two Nevada counties asking the court to instruct them to process challenges of suspected ineligible voters who have moved from the residence where they are registered.
For background, as reported by The Globe:
Since May, the foundation has “filed roughly a dozen “test challenges” in Clark County under a provision of state law known as Section 547 using data from the secretary of state’s office and the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address database. It also compared this information with the “official voter registration records of 15 other states.”
Thirteen of the 17 Nevada counties received the challenges from COF and half of the counties processed them by sending a verification letter to the voter in question. The counties that were non responsive included Clark County, the largest county in the Silver State.
In early August, after the routine maintenance list was published by the NVSOS, the foundation filed another challenge related to voters who have moved out of the state, within the state to a different county, or moved within the county to a different voting district.
In a conversation with The Globe, Muth confirmed that an additional total of 34,222 challenges of “ineligible, ‘moved’ voters” had been filed in early August. Of that total, approximately 20,000 are in Clark County and an estimated 11,000 challenges were filed in Washoe County.
Due to the lack of response to those challenges, COF then filed a public records request in late August and found that the SOS had intervened by issuing a memo on August 27 to election officials.
The memo from Deputy Secretary of Elections Mark Wlaschin claimed that the “personal knowledge” requirement under Section 535 should be interpreted in exactly the same way as the requirement in Section 547. He further instructed clerks to reject challenges made under the former section by organizations like COF that do not fulfill the latter’s definition of “personal knowledge.”
“It is the opinion of the Secretary of State that such challenges do not meet the requirement of ‘personal knowledge’ of facts supporting the challenge required by NRS 293.535 and 293.547,” Wlaschin wrote. “County clerks who receive these challenges should reject them and instruct challengers that personal knowledge gained through firsthand experience or observation of the facts relating to a voter’s eligibility is necessary to file a valid challenge under either statute.”
Wlaschin admitted that “‘personal knowledge’ is not explicitly defined under [Section 535] or implementing regulations,” yet claimed “the Secretary views the term to mean the same thing in both statutes.”
Filed by The O’Mara Law Firm on behalf of COF, the Petition for Writ of Mandamus asks the First Judicial Court of the State of Nevada “to compel the Carson City and Storey County Clerks to perform their duties…by requiring the Clerks to notify the registrant of the challenge and take the necessary actions as required under NRS 293.530.”
“This was a last resort action we’ve worked hard to avoid,” said Chuck Muth, president of COF, in a press release. “We’ve done everything by the book and according to the law, but the Clerks got caught between a rock and a hard place. Some had been properly processing our challenges as required by law,” Muth continued, “until Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar issued a directive in August advising them to reject our challenges based on a bizarre reading of the statute. So we were left with no choice but to seek the court’s intervention,” he concluded.
Muth noted that some Clerks had been working cooperatively with his organization in processing the challenges until Secretary Aguilar’s memo, while others have been hiding behind the directive as an excuse to duck their responsibilities.
This is the first of what COF expects will be multiple lawsuits filed in other counties this week unless they reject the Secretary of State’s opinion and immediately begin processing the duly-filed challenges.
Pigpen-Project.Writ-of-Mandamus-Carson-City
A recent Review-Journal letter to the editor mischaracterized Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s Southern Nevada Economic Development and Conservation Act, also known as the Clark County Lands bill. As the former executive director of the Nevada Conservation League, I wholeheartedly support this legislation, so I wanted to set the record straight.
Sen. Cortez Masto has been working on this bill for years in partnership with state and local governments, conservation groups like the NCL and local area tribes. It’s true that the Clark County lands bill would open 25,000 acres to help Las Vegas grow responsibly, while setting aside 2 million acres for conservation. It would also help create more affordable housing throughout the valley while ensuring our treasured public spaces can be preserved for generations to come.
What is not correct is that the money from these land sales would go to the federal government’s coffers. In fact, the opposite is true.
The 1998 Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act is a landmark bill that identified specific public land for future sale and created a special account ensuring all land sale revenues would come back to Nevada. In accordance with that law 5 percent of revenue from land transfers goes to the state of Nevada for general education purposes, 10 percent goes to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for needed water infrastructure and 85 percent supports conservation and environmental mitigation projects in Southern Nevada. This legislation has provided billions to Clark County and will continue to benefit generations of Southern Nevadans. Sen. Cortez Masto’s lands bill builds upon the act’s success.
So here’s the good news: All of the money generated from land made available for sale under Sen. Cortez Masto’s bill would be sent to the special account created by the 1998 law. Rather than going to an unaccountable federal government, the proceeds would continue to help kids in Vegas get a better education, bolster outdoor recreation and modernize Southern Nevada’s infrastructure.
I know how important it is that money generated from the sale of public land in Nevada stay in the hands of Nevadans, and so does the senator. That’s why she opposed a Republican effort last year to sell off 200,000 acres of land in Clark County and other areas of the country that would have sent those dollars directly to Washington.
Public land management in Nevada should benefit Nevadans. We should protect sacred cultural sites and beloved recreation spaces, responsibly transfer land for affordable housing when needed and ensure our state has the resources it needs to grow sustainably. I will continue working with Sen. Cortez Masto to advocate for legislation, such as the Clark County lands bill, that puts the needs of Nevadans first.
Paul Selberg writes from Las Vegas.
click to expand photos
Las Vegas High’s baseball team claimed a 3-2 home win over Coronado on Friday.
Las Vegas (9-13-1) next hosts Rancho at 10 a.m. Saturday. Coronado (13-14) hosts Chaparral at 3:30 p.m. Monday.
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — Nevada’s jobless rate is holding steady, but the state is still adding jobs.
A new report from DETR shows February’s unemployment rate unchanged at 5.3 percent, with the labor force growing by nearly 3,800 people.
MORE ON FOX5: Nevada unemployment rate rises to 5.3% in January
Nevada now has about 1.6 million nonfarm jobs, up 2.2 percent over the past year and 1,500 more jobs than in January.
“This month’s report shows a strengthening labor market,” said David Schmidt, Chief Economist. ”Compared to the report for January, the pace of job gains in the past year increased from 1.9% to 2.2%, building on what was already the fastest pace of job growth in the country. While the unemployment rate remained stable, the labor force participation rate rose to 63.7%, 1.7 percentage points higher than the national level.”
In Las Vegas, employment ticked up by 1,100 jobs in February, about 0.1 percent, and is up more than 25,000 jobs compared to last year.
Reno added 1,000 jobs on the month, while Carson City shed about 200 but is still slightly above where it was a year ago.
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