Nevada lawmakers on Thursday approved a batch of new election rules, including allowing candidates to use campaign donations to purchase firearms and making changes on issues tied to Republican-led lawsuits from the 2024 election.

The changes approved by the state’s Legislative Commission — a Democrat-led group of lawmakers that has the final say in approving proposed regulations — are meant to clarify and add specifics to measures passed by the Nevada Legislature. Some of the new rules prompted pushback from Republican lawmakers.

The rules come the week before Nevada’s candidate filing period opens and about three months before the state’s primaries. Other new regulations are related to post-election audits of voting machines and waiving penalties for campaign finance violations. 

Here are the most significant changes:

No postmarks on mail ballots

The Republican National Committee, Nevada GOP and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign filed a failed lawsuit in 2024 seeking to block the counting of mail ballots with no postmark. 

State law requires all mail ballots be postmarked by Election Day in order to be counted, but it allows for mail ballots in which the postmark “cannot be determined” as long as they are received within three days following Election Day. The suit alleged that the state was too broadly interpreting this law by also counting ballots with no postmark.

In a 2024 memo from the secretary of state’s office, election officials said this law also includes mail ballots with “no visible postmark,” and that they are valid votes as long as they were received within the necessary timeframe.

The rule approved Thursday codifies that interpretation in state regulations. It says if the ballot is received in the three-day window, it should be considered as having been postmarked by Election Day “and may not be rejected solely on the ground that the postmark is illegible, incomplete or otherwise absent.”

It also says county election officials can look at barcode data to determine when the U.S. Postal Service received the ballot.

Mark Wlaschin, the deputy secretary of state for elections, told lawmakers the Postal Service sometimes intentionally does not postmark mail ballots to expedite their transmission to election offices. 

Sen. Ira Hansen (R-Sparks) said this “makes me very, very uncomfortable.”

“The biggest concern that we have in our elections is the potential for fraud. And now we’re gonna sit here and say that we openly acknowledge that the Postal Service is, in some cases, intentionally [not] postmarking a ballot,” he said. “You want to open up a Pandora’s box of conspiracy theories as to how election fraud can occur in Nevada, you just did.”

Hansen ultimately voted for the new rule after Wlaschin pointed out it was meant to clarify existing law.

Using databases for mass voter challenges

In 2024, a Nevada group led by conservative activist Chuck Muth filed challenges to more than 30,000 voters’ eligibility, alleging they had moved and were ineligible to vote in their registered jurisdiction.

It relied on the Postal Service’s National Change of Address database, and the group filed (but eventually dropped) three lawsuits seeking to force investigations into the challenges.

Nevada law requires anyone filing a voter eligibility challenge to have “personal knowledge” of the facts alleged. In 2024, the secretary of state’s office told local election officials that the use of “databases or compilations of information” does not mean that a challenger has “personal knowledge” of the facts alleged in the challenge.

That interpretation is the crux of the new regulation. To meet the “personal knowledge” threshold, the challenger must have “firsthand experience or firsthand observation of the facts,” and they cannot rely on “information obtained from the review of data in a database or other compilation of information.”

“When you use a database, you now have personal knowledge of a database. You don’t have personal knowledge that somebody has moved to Florida or Texas,” Wlaschin said Thursday.

Senate Minority Leader Robin Titus (R-Wellington) said she was concerned the new rule “is going to be so restrictive that it’s going to be inefficient.”

Wlaschin said the state plans to conduct outreach via letter or text message to inform residents who have moved out of state to cancel their registration.

Campaign donations for guns

During the Legislature’s November special session, lawmakers unanimously passed AB3, which allows candidates and elected officials to use campaign donations for “personal security” purposes. Officials were already allowed to use contributions for campaign expenses related to travel, advertising and staff.

The bill came about five months after lawmakers took heightened security measures following the June assassination of a Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband. Several legislators also received threats in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

The regulation approved Thursday says “personal security” expenses can cover the purchases of guns and any related ammunition, training, accessories or permitting fees. It can also cover costs of home security systems, efforts to remove personal information online and staff for personal security.

There was no discussion on the regulation Thursday.