Tribal leaders moved into the 2020 general election campaign season with the same goal held by other organizers — to achieve high voter turnout and elevate the voices and concerns of their fellow community members.

Carson City District Court Judge James Wilson said he’ll have a decision ready “as soon as possible” after a nearly nine-hour evidentiary hearing Wednesday in the lawsuit seeking various changes to how the state’s most populous county processes mail votes and allows for volunteers and others to observe the counting of ballots.

State and county officials say that ballots are sent to the wrong address because of issues with keeping voter rolls up to date. Election officials are typically not informed when someone moves out of state or to a different in-state residence (unless they register to vote at that new address), so there is sometimes a lag between addresses listed on the rolls and actual residences of voters.

The mailings arrive in an election year when the president of the United States is suing Nevada over a bill expanding mail-in voting for the general election and the U.S. Postal Service sent a postcard with inaccurate information about mail-in voting in Nevada.

It’s the first prosecution related to double voting brought by Ford, a Democrat, since he’s taken office in 2018, and just the third prosecuted case of double voting in the state since at least 2011.

The Nevada Independent has compiled and answered a list of frequently asked questions regarding the state’s changes and modifications in place for the 2020 election.

When the pandemic forced the DMV to close in-person services and waive deadlines, license renewals slowed, vehicle registrations lapsed and voter registration numbers plummeted as people largely stopped interacting with the DMV.

Cegavske, who opposed a provision passed this month through AB4 that allows non-family members to turn ballots in on behalf of other voters, criticized the Legislature in a statement Monday for not taking a more “measured” approach to changing ballot collection rules.

AB4 was signed into law by Gov. Steve Sisolak during the second special session of 2020. The bill aims to continue the process of holding a primarily mail-in election come November, this time by mailing ballots to all active registered voters and providing more polling locations in the two urban counties than existed in June for the primary election.

A bill passed by Nevada lawmakers during a special session that calls for mail-in ballots to be sent to all active registered voters when an election comes in the wake of a statewide emergency or disaster declaration has stirred a flurry of reaction, all the way up to President Donald Trump.

Cegavske has argued that the move to a mostly mail primary election in June was a special circumstance and that Nevadans should adjust to a new normal. She said people who fear for their health in going to vote in person can request an absentee ballot and that her office is making that easier by implementing an online absentee ballot request process.

The law is also specific on making donations to PACs as a way to get around contribution limits, stating that it’s an illegal practice to “make a contribution to a committee for political action with the knowledge and intent that the (PAC) will contribute that money to a specific candidate which, in combination with the total contributions already made by the person for the same election, would violate the limitations on contributions.”

Of the more than 490,000 ballots cast in Nevada’s primary election, 10,799 were unable to be counted statewide — most because of invalid signatures that voters failed to “cure.”

In a lengthy press release issued Friday, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Wayne Thorley attempted to clarify the legal basis as to why election officials in Clark County have sent mail ballots to “inactive” voters, a category of voters who have not responded to election correspondence but are still eligible to vote.

Washoe County Health District officials acknowledged during a weekly press call on Wednesday that the number of new COVID-19 cases is not declining but rather plateauing as the state has started to reopen portions of its economy.

Nevada is trying to conduct its June 9 primary election almost entirely by mail as a way to prevent the spread of COVID-19, with limited options to vote in person. Wayne Thorley, deputy secretary of state for elections, took questions from the public about the process in a Facebook Live town hall on May 11.

Members of the state’s Interim Finance Committee approved the spending requested by the secretary of state’s office during their meeting on Thursday, money that will pay for printing and mailing costs, new election equipment and a marketing campaign for the planned mail-only election on June 9.

Although “early voting” sites will be open, local election officials said that there won’t be any traditional voting machines at the sites; instead, voters will be given an absentee ballot and asked to fill it out.

The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at USC’s Center on Communication Leadership and Policy designed the program, which they are bringing to all 50 states prior to the November 2020 general election. On Tuesday, the initiative made its stop in Nevada, where its panel of experts was joined on the UNLV campus by a state elections official who warned that a new Nevada law might delay election results.

Additionally, the office sends voters that default to nonpartisan a letter informing them of their nonpartisan status. Because Nevada has closed primary elections for the two major parties, voters are informed that they must register with a major party to participate in those elections.