LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The public will get a first look this week at new election technology that will be rolled out for next year's elections, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said Tuesday.
The open house of sorts will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday at the Nevada Legislature's Clark Building, located at 7230 Amigo Street, Room 1651.
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Aguilar said the goal of the demonstration from vendors who supply voting equipment to the state is to increase confidence in election results.
"Transparency is key to building trust, and if we can build that trust and show voters all the information that we have, they can truly understand how the election process works," Aguilar said.
One of the most common complaints about Nevada elections is the delay in getting final results; since ballots postmarked by Election Day can be received up to four days later and still be counted, some close races aren't finally called until the week after the election.
Efforts to move up those deadlines in Carson City have been rebuffed by Democrats. But Aguilar says new technology will give voters more insight into the process, allowing them to see how many ballots are left to count, for example.
And, he said, nearly all ballots were in and counted by Election Day in the 2024 general election. One of the problems: about 57,000 mail-in ballots that were dropped off at polling places on the day of the election took time to verify and count.
One of the new innovations for 2026 will be a ballot marking device, which will produce a paper ballot that a voter can check for accuracy before placing it directly into a vote-counting machine. That, Aguilar says, will increase confidence in results.
"The goal is to build transparency that builds the trust," Aguilar said. "And if we can build the transparency, the public has all the information that they need to know, that our systems are safe, secure and transparent, and that's the whole goal."
Vendors expected at the Friday event including Dominion Voting Systems, BallotTrax, ProVote Solutions, VotingWorks and the Electronic Registration Information Center, otherwise known as ERIC.
State elections officials will also be on hand to answer questions.
National elections issues
Meanwhile, Aguilar and his fellow secretaries of state are dealing with national election issues, including a request from the U.S. Justice Department for full voter file information from about two dozen states.
The request includes public information, such as names, addresses and party affiliation, but also asks for information that's not generally public, including Social Security and drivers license numbers.
On a call with reporters sponsored by the nonpartisan group States United, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the scope of the request was something she'd never seen before.
"So this raised eyebrows for all of us, Democrats and Republicans alike, because not only is it unprecedented, not only is it, in my view, a stunning overreach of presidential power, but some parts of our voter rolls are public, but not the most personal information of residents," she said. "That data we are extremely careful to protect."
Aguilar said states have asked the federal government why it wants the information and what steps it will take to protect it from being released, but has not received answers.
"We need more transparency from the federal government on why they're making these requests," he said. "We talk about transparency all the time in our elections, we work hard every day to ensure there's transparency. There's no difference in why the federal government can't be transparent in their request, what they're going to do with the data, and how they're going to secure it before we hand it over. This is voter information. These are people's lives that live in our communities."
Channel 13 reached out to the Justice Department's public affairs department to ask the same questions, but did not receive a reply by deadline.
Benson speculated that the Justice Department wanted the information for potential criminal immigration investigations, or perhaps to disenfranchise legitimate voters by alleging that state rolls are inaccurate.
"Many election officials, including me, worry that the [President Donald] Trump administration wants this information so that it could be used to target, harass and intimidate individual citizens, political adversaries and potentially deter entire communities from voting," Benson said.
Trump has also cautioned against the use of mail ballots, something Aguilar said would only hurt members of Trump's party.
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"Well, I think they'd be hurting their constituency," he said. "I think before broad claims are made about our mail ballots, they should truly understand who's using them. Douglas County was the highest adopter of mail ballots. That county is very much in line with the current administration, and if you're going to disenfranchise voters who are supporting you, I think that's a bad decision."
To be sure, Trump finally won Nevada in 2024, the first year the Republican Party encouraged its members to vote using any method available, including mail and early voting.
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