Among the many close races included in the 2022 mid-term elections, incumbent Nevada Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Republican Adam Laxalt by less than 10,000 votes (or slightly under 1 percent).
Nevada was a top target for the GOP in its effort to recapture a 50-50 U.S. Senate. Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general and grandson of former Nevada Senator Paul Laxalt, had been endorsed by Donald Trump in a contest that was not determined until four days following the November 8 election.
Now, on the heels of the election, it’s worth noting just what a complete mess Nevada’s voter rolls are. They contain duplicates, names of those who have died and others who simply can’t be located. All of this is according to the Public Interest Legal Foundation. Yet anyone who appears on these rolls is automatically mailed a ballot to vote.
During the 2020 presidential election, Nevada (like so many other states) conducted a mass vote by mail for the first time in the name of COVID. And it didn’t go well.
Photos revealed untold numbers of ballots blowing in the wind. Countless others ended up in landfills or were delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to vacant lots.
In Clark County, Nevada alone, more than 92,000 ballots were returned to the post office as undeliverable in a state that Joe Biden captured by slightly over 33,000 votes. This is a recipe for disaster and needs to be cleaned up despite claims by many that America’s elections are the envy of the world.
Elections used to be conducted on Election Day. Now mass mailing of ballots has stretched out the process with chaos galore.
The delay of election results in states like Nevada, Arizona and Alaska is entirely due to voting by mail. If these states returned to in-person voting, election results would be available on Election Day. The Postal Service freely admits that at least 6 percent of the time political mail arrives late. How much did this fact conceivably affect the Masto/Laxalt Senate race? We may never know, but those who vote in person get to see their ballot counted after they insert it into a computer. Nothing exists yet which can compare.
In 2020, states across America rejected over 550,000 ballots for various reasons. Voters who fail to completely and accurately complete mail-in ballots risk their vote not counting or put themselves at the mercy of election officials who “cure” (correct) the ballot instead. Meanwhile, an in-person voter who messes up a ballot can simply request a new one.
Despite the efforts of Democrats to make voting “easy” by turning the process from an efficient one-day event into one which is extended out by days and weeks due to a never-ending stream of mail-in ballots, no election should ever be determined by the post office.
Election laws are determined by the states. Republican-controlled legislatures must decide whether they are all in on changes like mail-in voting that Democrats rammed home under the auspices of COVID. If they are, there’s work to be done in cleaning up the process. If not, work is still necessary to mobilize support for a return to a more Election-Day-based process. Either way, nothing will be easy with the pushback that could be expected from Democrats, who have clearly benefitted from current rules, and a complicit media.
Failing to acknowledge there is a serious problem with our current election process or name-calling those who are legitimately concerned about it is unacceptable. This is no way to run a republic, and in an age where more and more elections are determined by a handful of votes, no one wants their ballot nullified or simply blown away in the wind.
Mark Figley is a political activist and guest columnist from Elida. His column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Lima News editorial board or AIM Media, owner of The Lima News.
