Nevada election officials scrapped a record number of ballots because of unresolved questions about ineligible signatures during the 2024 elections.
More than 9,000 mail-in ballots with inadequate signatures, or 0.6% of all votes cast, were tossed after Nevada’s deadline to “cure” or fix any problems with ballots passed on Nov. 12, a week after Election Day.
“It’s very disappointing that more than 9,000 Nevadans did not have their votes count this election due to the failure to have their ballots cured,” Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar told the Nevada Independent.
Although Nevada election officials resolved signature problems on more than 23,000 mail-in ballots, marking another record broken this cycle, Aguilar plans to ask the state legislature to improve the curing process next year.
Aguilar noted on Nov. 5 that many ballots needing to be cured came from Clark County, where both Republican presidential and Senate candidates made significant inroads this election cycle. He also said many of the problematic ballots came from younger voters who neglected to sign their names on the forms. A postelection analysis from the outlet added that many of the votes in question came from registered nonpartisans.
Given exit poll data showing independent and young voters trended toward the Republican Party in 2024, the news could likely come as another blow to the state’s GOP senate candidate Sam Brown, whose challenge to Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) was decided by a close margin. The Republican senate hopeful conceded a razor-thin loss of roughly 23,000 to Rosen last week.
Nevada’s overall 2024 elections appeared to run fairly smoothly compared to the 2020 cycle. However, questions were raised after more than 1,600 uncounted ballots were discovered in Clark County, the state’s most populous county, nine days after the election. The ballots were subsequently counted and did not change the results of any election.
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Aguilar assured voters the mistake would not happen again and pledged that “appropriate accountability measures” would be taken in comments to the outlet.
The 2024 election cycle notably marks the first time Nevada has used its new $30 million top-down Voter Registration and Election Management Solution system. VREMS is a “centralized statewide voter registration database” that connects election processes and data from all of Nevada’s 17 counties and consolidates all the information into a single system.