In the final days of Nevada’s legislative session, it looked like major changes could be coming to state elections.

Lawmakers sent two bills to Gov. Joe Lombardo’s desk in the closing hours of the 120-day session to implement voter ID and allow nonpartisans to vote in non-presidential party primaries. 

But the Republican governor vetoed both proposals — as well as many other election-related bills — meaning that voters, candidates and elected officials should not expect major changes to election procedures next year.

Election administration is among the most partisan issues in the state, with disputes surrounding mail ballot procedures, the timeliness of counting votes and voter ID requirements. Efforts to expedite the state’s slow ballot processing did not become law, nor did the Republican efforts to impose stricter deadlines for mail ballots and signature curing.

It reflects the difficulty in advancing bills related to elections in a Legislature controlled by Democrats and a governor’s mansion occupied by a Republican. Because Democrats are one seat shy of a supermajority in both chambers, they do not have the votes required to overturn Lombardo’s vetoes.

One notable bill died not because of partisanship, but due to legislative rules. SB74 would have made many changes to the state’s election administration processes — including amending candidate filing procedures and allocating $200,000 for county election official training courses — but it needed one final procedural approval in the Senate. It fell by the wayside in the final minutes of the session, as the chamber’s progress ground to a halt.

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, lamented the stalling of the bill — which he believed Lombardo would have signed — and said it would not have happened if lawmakers had placed a greater emphasis on election administration.

“I wish legislators understood the importance of administering our elections and what the expectations are of voters,” he said in an interview.

Still, some election-related proposals were signed into law. This includes bills to require the disclosure of artificial intelligence use in campaign materials, impose a $1,000 filing fee for presidential primary candidates, crack down on harassment and threats against political candidates and require local election officials to recruit election workers on tribal reservations.

The secretary of state’s office also received more than $30 million in state funds for its centralized voter registration and election management system, and lawmakers passed a bill that would change and standardize the deadline for voters to receive mail ballots.

SOS priority bills

The session largely fell flat for state election officials’ top priority: expediting the ballot counting process.

Aguilar was publicly frustrated in the aftermath of the 2024 general election because the results of tens of thousands of mail ballots did not get released until a day after Election Day, despite being received that day. He told The Indy in an interview this week that in Clark County, 99 percent of all ballots were received by the end of Election Day, but the results of only 90 percent were announced — meaning forecasters were unable to call the state for a presidential candidate until days after Election Day. 

To address this bottleneck, the secretary of state’s office sought to create a new grant program to provide local election offices with more resources in its omnibus bill, AB534. It also backed AB306, a proposal from Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) to increase ballot drop boxes in the days leading up to an election (to decrease counting on Election Day), but Lombardo vetoed both proposals, saying that the first bill “centralizes too much authority” in the secretary of state’s office, while the latter did not include sufficient security measures for the drop boxes.

“It was disappointing and disheartening because those bills were developed with feedback from general everyday voters,” Aguilar said in an interview.

Lombardo also vetoed AB79, a proposal from the secretary of state’s office that would have amended the process for addressing campaign finance violations and allowed candidates to use unspent campaign contributions for everyday costs incurred because of their role.

Voter ID, nonpartisan primary voting

The session was largely quiet on the election front until Yeager proposed the voter ID (AB499) and nonpartisan primary (AB597) bills in the final week of the session. They each spurred widespread frustration from different ends of the political spectrum, even as lawmakers approved both proposals with ease. 

The voter ID bill was particularly contentious on the left, with voting rights groups panning Democrats for pursuing the legislation at the last minute. Five Democratic senators ultimately voted against the bill. Yeager had argued the bill was a way to preempt what he viewed as the inevitable rollout of voter ID, which voters had overwhelmingly passed via ballot question last year. It is now returning to the 2026 ballot, with the earliest implementation being 2028.

Despite Yeager pitching the bill as a compromise with the governor’s office, Lombardo vetoed the bill. He specifically criticized a provision that allowed a mail voter’s signature to be sufficient to verify their identity, even if the personally identifiable number attached to their ballot was unverifiable.

He said after vetoing the bill that it “fell short of the voter integrity that Nevadans deserve.”

Ken Miller, a UNLV political science professor, said in an interview that Lombardo may have vetoed the bill because Republicans want the question on the 2026 ballot to drive GOP voter turnout. Although the question would have still been on the ballot if this year’s legislation had passed, MIller said it would carry much more weight if voter ID was not already in place.

“They’re operating on the belief that having a voter ID ballot initiative is going to encourage conservative turnout,” he said. “I think the empirical evidence for doing that is really dubious, but that's a belief that they have.”

Lombardo’s veto of the nonpartisan primary bill was less surprising because it received universal opposition from GOP legislators.