New laws from the 2025 legislative session aim to increase accessibility to Nevada’s elections and improve voters’ experiences.

Election reform was a major focus in Carson City, though bills that sought to drastically change Nevada’s elections were blocked by the governor, including legislation to implement voter ID requirements and to allow nonpartisan voters to participate in primaries.

Other bills seeking changes were successful, from requiring that sample ballots be sent before official mail ballots to disclosing campaign advertisements made with artificial intelligence.

“Everything we tried to do this session has been focused on the voter experience and the voter perspective,” said Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.

The major highlights

Aguilar said the biggest highlight from the legislative session for him was the continued investment into modernizing the state’s voter registration system.

Nevada appropriated over $27 million to go toward merging Clark County with the other 16 counties into one Voter Registration Election Management Solution system, known as VREMS.

Last August, the state launched its top-down voter registration and election management system, which collects and stores voter registration information from all counties. Clark County implemented the system in 2023, and the 16 other counties joined the program in 2024. Now, the two will merge together, Aguilar said.

Aguilar said putting all the counties on one system will allow the state to do a better job with voter rolls and build transparency by providing real-time information about the elections process.

“There’s consistency from county to county,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “There’s consistency in polling location to polling location. The security and safety of the election is stronger because everybody’s operating off of one unified system that has strong cybersecurity.”

The secretary of state’s office was also provided $1.5 million for voter education and outreach through Senate Bill 488. That money will allow counties to send text messages to voters about upcoming elections or if their ballot signatures need curing.

Other new laws aim to improve voters’ experience, Aguilar said.

For instance, sample ballots now must be mailed before mail ballots, thanks to a new law put forward by Republican Assemblymember Gregory Hafen and Democratic Speaker Steve Yeager. In 2024, voters expressed confusion when they received their official mail ballots before their sample ballots, which provide voter information about what will appear on the official ballot and includes pros and cons for each ballot question.

County or city clerks must also recruit election board officers for polling places on tribal reservations and provide them with training on the reservation, unless a tribe opts to not participate, thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 421, which aims to increase voter participation in Nevada’s Indigenous communities.

The new law expands on a bill passed in the 2023 Legislature requiring clerks to establish polling places and ballot drop boxes on tribal lands. There were staffing shortages in several locations, including the Shoshone Paiute Tribe of Duck Valley, which had to raise more than $5,000 to staff their polling place, according to Jennifer Willett, the Nevada senior campaign manager for All Voting is Local.

“It’s a minor shift, but it’ll impact a lot of people,” Willett said. “Over time, people will know that they can go there, and they’ll be able to vote in their community confidently at a staffed polling place.”

Another new law, AB 367, aims to improve accessibility to non-English speaking voters. The law creates a language access coordinator in the secretary of state’s office and requires the office to make sure voting materials and other election information are available in at least seven of the most commonly spoken languages in Nevada.

It also requires the secretary of state to establish a toll-free telephone number voters can use to receive language interpretation assistance for an election. A voter who may be deaf or hard of hearing can also use a mobile device to access interpretive services including American Sign Language. Aguilar said his office was doing that work already, but the bill codifies those practices into law.

Nevada is the third most diverse state in the nation, with one in three Nevadans speaking a language other than English at home and nearly 4 percent of Nevadans having a hearing difficulty, Willett said.

“We think that dismantling any barriers for people that don’t speak English as their first language, or aren’t comfortable speaking English, should be able to register to vote, learn about voting and candidates and cast their ballot using any options that they want,” Willett said.

Chuck Muth, a conservative blogger who has long fought to clean up the state’s voter rolls, said overall he thinks session was a “wash” when it came to election reform. Lombardo vetoed bills that Muth said would have harmed Nevada, but not much was done to enhance election security, he said. Muth would have liked to see changes to the mail ballot deadline so that they could not arrive after Election Day, though less than 1 percent of ballots arrive after Election Day, according to Aguilar.

Campaigning changes

Nevadans can expect to see some changes to campaigning ahead of future elections.

Any AI-generated campaign communication — such as a campaign advertisement supporting or opposing a candidate — must disclose that it was made with artificial intelligence after the passage of AB 73.

The new law addresses the rising use of AI-generated materials as a cost-effective alternative to traditional ways of creating content, and it comes on the heels of experts expressing concern about the role artificial intelligence will play in elections.

Aguilar said the goal of the law is to give voters the context and the source of the information that they’re seeing and relying on when deciding how to vote.

Muth said he discloses when he uses AI in his newsletter, but he thinks that should be voluntary.

“I just think it’s probably problematic whenever the government gets involved,” Muth said.

Another new law to reduce intimidation and violence in campaigns. AB 123 prohibits a person from making statements that threaten or intimidate a candidate for public office.

The law was sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Hanadi Nadeem, the first Muslim woman elected to the Legislature. She put forward the bill after experiencing death threats while running for Assembly.

“It was truly a horrific experience I do not wish upon anyone, whether it be a fellow candidate, voter or Nevadan,” Nadeem said during the bill’s hearing. “No one should have to fear for their life or to be discouraged from running for office because of the actions of another.”

Aguilar said that bill goes back to overall safety and security of elections, and it also encourages participation.

“We want people to run for office because the more diverse perspective we get, the stronger the state we’re going to be,” Aguilar said. “And if people aren’t running because they’re fearful, that’s the problem.”

Another new law, AB 491, requires elected officers to be registered to vote in the state, district, county or township where the officer is required to reside.

“That’s the intent, I think, and hopefully it acts as an encouragement to say, if you’re going to run for office, that you actually live in the community you’re voted to represent,” Aguilar said.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.

A new Nevada law gives families who may get split up because of a deportation order a chance to choose a temporary guardian for their child.

Assembly Bill 540 was signed into law last week and is already in effect. It allows a parent or guardian of a minor to nominate another person to be their court-appointed guardian if no parent is around because of a federal immigration order.

Assemblymember Cecelia González, D-Las Vegas, said the bill came out of listening sessions with the Latino community before the beginning of the 83rd legislative session, which ended earlier this month. She said some community members were nervous about what would happen if they were deported, but their children with citizenship or legal status stayed in the country.

“We came up with this bill to make sure that the most vulnerable, which would be these children of undocumented parents — what do we do to make sure they’re not falling through the cracks?” González said Tuesday.

Before the law was passed, guardianship was most often sorted out when a loved one or friend petitioned the court for guardianship after a separation already occurred, said Cristian Gonzalez Perez, the supervising attorney at the nonprofit advocacy group Make the Road Nevada. Temporary guardianship also exists for six month periods through a less formal agreement that does not require court approval and instead can be set between the parents and guardian.

The new law follows a similar process available in adult guardianship cases. Gonzalez Perez said it allows people act proactively.

“You can avoid issues where, say, you have a really involved family, and they all want to try to petition for the guardianship,” he said. “To avoid squabbles between family members, the court can now look at to see who the parents prefer to be the main guardian.”

AB 540 passed unanimously in the Assembly and 16-4 in the state Senate. Republican Sens. Carrie Buck, John Ellison, Ira Hansen and Robin Titus opposed, and Democrat Melanie Scheible was absent from the vote.

During the May 31 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Hansen said he thought the existing law was sufficient.

”We already have this in law,” he said before the committee vote. “This is political theater, trying to make the efforts to enforce immigration laws into something way beyond what they’re attempting to do.”

The law includes a form for the parents to submit with nominations, which could be added to the Nevada Lockbox, an electronic registry run by the Secretary of State.

González said she was conscious that some people in that situation may be afraid to interact with the government for fear of it impacting their immigration case or speeding up a deportation order.

“I hope that people utilize it, but I’m also aware of when a government is tearing your family apart, you’re not going to go ask them for help,” González said. “I think it’s going to take a lot of education on our end, as Latino elected officials and just as trusted messengers of our community to really educate the community about how you can utilize this and how this is another tool in the toolbox in the event that that unfortunate day comes.”

Gonzalez Perez said the new law could lead to a decrease in temporary guardianships, which are sometimes recommended at community sessions that go over immigration processes and rights. He encouraged people to not be afraid of the state government running the lockbox and court-appointed guardianship process.

“Instead of having that in place, you can then have the nomination ahead of time, which will just who’s going to be the nominee, rather than having something informally in place that might not be necessary at the moment,” he said. 

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A wise observer of Carson City once opined that the legislative process was designed to kill bills, not to pass them.

And judging by the Vegas Chamber’s post-legislative session breakfast on Wednesday at the California Hotel & Casino, success in Carson City this year was measured as much in bills that died as in ones that passed.

WATCH | Here are the killed bills discussed at the lobbyist breakfast

Vegas Chamber: No bad bills for Nevada businesses survived in legislative session

Chamber Senior Vice President of Government Affairs Paul Moradkhan said his team had tracked 879 bills, testified on 204 and helped negotiation more pro-business amendments to 24.

But he said that the Chamber had helped kill 41 bills and cheered the veto of another 26.

“And you look because of the work of the business community as a whole, we were able to stop those,” Moradkhan told the crowd. “They were either killed, vetoed or mitigated. So I’m proud to say not a single bad bill got through the session. That’s what we talked about is a huge win for the Nevada business community.”

Among the bills Moradkhan said he helped kill was Assembly Bill 388, a measure by Assemblywoman Selena La Rue Hatch, D-Washoe County, that would have offered state and private-sector workers eight weeks of paid family leave. That bill was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, one of 87 bills he rejected during or after the 2025 session.

Another was Assembly Bill 414, by Assemblywoman Cinthia Moore, D-Clark County, that would have required safety standards for warehouse workers exposed to vehicle exhaust fumes. That bill was vetoed.

And Senate Bill 182 — by state Sen. Rochelle Nguyen, D-Clark County — would have required staffing plans at hospitals, including setting minimum nurse-patient ratios. That bill was also vetoed.

But it wasn’t just killing bills that occupied the Chamber’s team. Moradkhan said he was most pleased with Assembly Bill 444, which requires chambers of commerce to be notified of new regulations.

He also cheered a similar measure, Assembly Bill 125, which requires that all public agency meetings be posted on a state website and Senate Bill 373, which provides for business licenses in Clark County that are good across jurisdictional lines.

He said that the Chamber was already at work preparing for the 2027 session, when he said he expects to see some killed or vetoed bills return.

“We were able to kill some bills, stop some bills, but we know they’re going to come back, so we’re prepared to have that conversation,” he said.

Do you have questions about politics, elections or government? Email us using the Ask Steve link on our website.