Brennan Center for Justice

Nevada currently has the Online Registration component of Voter Registration Modernization in place.

The excerpt below was adapted from an appendix to the 2010 report Voter Registration in a Digital Age.

Background
On September 1, 2010, Nevada introduced an online registration portal for residents of Clark County, home to 72% of the state’s population.[1]   According to state Elections Deputy Matt Griffin, introducing the system in other counties would not have been possible before the 2010 general election, but the Secretary of State plans to make the online system available to all Nevada residents in time for 2012 presidential caucuses. At present only first-time registrations can be made online; registered voters will be provided the opportunity to update their registrations once the system is introduced into other counties.

Nevada election officials use a "bottom-up" database system that links together separate county databases, as opposed to the unified, "top-down" system found in most other states. This can complicate the task of expanding connectivity within the system, as technical sophistication and infrastructure may vary between counties. Mr. Griffin reports that this is the case in Nevada, where Clark County (pop. 1,900,000) uses a considerably more advanced registration database system than, for example, Esmeralda County (pop. 600), and was consequently in a position to accept online registration sooner. Faced with the choice of offering online registration to a majority of state residents in 2010 or to none of them, state officials opted for the former course.

Nevada's online system is unique in including an address verification process. When an applicant enters her home address, the system performs a real-time check of Clark County’s database of residential addresses. It will not allow the applicant to proceed unless it finds a matching, valid address. Applicants commonly make minor mistakes when entering their addresses—forgetting to include an apartment number, for example, or putting "Maple St." for "Maple Rd." or "E. Maple St."—and the goal is to deal with this problem at the source, rather than leave county officials to attempt to resolve them.

Work on the online system began in October 2009, though according to Mr. Griffin there were periods amounting to about three to four months total when other priorities compelled his office to significantly limit the attention it devoted to this project. The work was done in-house, with little out-of-pocket expense; nor did state officials encounter any significant technical problems. State officials are currently exploring automation of the registration process at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
 

Outcomes
Mr. Griffin anticipates that the online system will prove more reliable and more secure than paper-based registration, while also delivering "huge" cost savings. He notes that the address verification process, in particular, will likely ensure a higher degree of accuracy and dramatically reduce the time county officials spend reviewing applications. He further expects that the online system will succeed in drawing in new applicants on its own, especially among younger residents, and thus reduce the role of sometimes-problematic voter registration drives.

Larry Lomax, the Clark County Registrar of Voters, has found that, thanks to the lack of data entry and the verification checks that occur before a person even submits an online registration, a large majority of these applications require "almost no work" when they reach his office. As of September 23, 2010, less than a month since the online portal debuted, he estimated that online submissions have come to account for one in every five new registrations he receives.
 

How Online Registration Works in Nevada
By following a link to the online portal on the Secretary of State’s website, a user comes to a page that asks her to choose her language preference, English or Spanish. Text on the page explains that the system can only be used by residents who are not already registered to vote, and who hold a Nevada driver’s license or photo identification card.

On the following page, the user must affirm her eligibility to register, and to use the online system, by answering several yes/no questions. A prominent warning at the top of the page states that falsifying a registration is a felony. Next, the user must enter her first and last name, date of birth, zip code, driver license or photo ID number, and the last four digits of her Social Security number. She is also asked to respond to a CAPTCHA test.

The online system will immediately attempt to verify the user’s driver license or photo ID number against DMV records. If it finds a valid match, the user proceeds to a page where she enters her home address and her mailing address (if different). As noted above, the online program will attempt to match the home address against Clark County records of residential addresses, and will prompt the user to re-enter her information if it cannot find a match. The user then proceeds to indicate her party preference, and may also choose to enter her phone number, email, and place of birth.

Finally the user reviews the information she has entered. If everything is correct she reviews an image of the signature in her DMV file and checks a box to confirm that it is hers clicks another box to indicate her agreement with an affirmation of eligibility, and clicks a button at the bottom of the page to submit her application. A confirmation page provides her a registration affidavit number and allows her to view and print a confirmation card immediately, or to have one sent by mail or email.

In the past, Nevada has considered the following VRM-related legislation:

• Multiple Provisions of VRM. This bill included electronic voter registration, portable voter registration, online registraiton, and Election Day registration. The Brennan Center testified on its behalf. (A.B. 108)

[1] As of September 2012, Nevada has expanded online registration to all counties.