Nevada launches ‘top-down’ voter registration system

Nevada launched its top-down voter registration and election management system Saturday, creating a unified registration process across the state’s 17 counties.

The Voter Registration and Election Management Solution (VREMS) project is a centralized system that moves the state and its counties into a top-down voter registration database that collects and stores voter registration information from all counties.

“I think this is a huge, huge step forward for the state of Nevada,” said Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. “This is an opportunity for us to be a leader across the country when it comes to election management, when it comes to enlistment, list maintenance and just overall voter experience.”

The launch of the system comes after Nevada counties finished cleaning their voter rolls by 90 days before the election, in accordance with federal law.

With those updates to the voter list, VREMS has the most up-to-date information, Aguilar said.

In 2021, Nevada’s legislature unanimously passed Assembly Bill 422 to implement the project with a 2024 deadline. Since then, the secretary of state’s office has been working with the company KNOWiNK and a third-party contractor called Gartner to get the system up and running.

The secretary of state’s office had about a $30 million budget to implement the system and has allocated $23.6 million, $8.9 million of which has been spent as of July 31.

Clark County, which accounts for about 70 percent of Nevada’s voters, implemented the system in 2023, but on Saturday the remaining counties were added to the program, according to Lorena Portillo, Clark County registrar of voters .

VREMS was supposed to launch April 1 ahead of the June 11 primary, but its launch was delayed at the request of 15 county clerks and election officials in order to work out remaining issues, such as minor customizations depending on the county, Aguilar said. It also allowed clerks additional training time under the new system, he said.

“We’ve been very strategic about its implementation. We’ve surrounded ourselves with the smartest people to make sure this went well,” Aguilar said. Whatever clerks said they needed to implement the project, the secretary of state’s office helped meet those requests, he said.

‘Faster communication’

Under the new system, counties and the state will be connected together, moving the state from its “bottom-up” voter registration systems that required the state to put together separate files from each county into a statewide voter registration file.

“Instead of having, you know, 17 different systems doing list maintenance for our voter rolls, we have a single system now that allows us to directly manage that information and have a streamlined, unified process across the state for list maintenance,” Aguilar said.

If someone comes to Elko County on Election Day to vote but already voted in Washoe, “we’re going to know right away,” said Elko County Clerk Rebecca “Becky” Plunkett. If a voter moves to Elko from a different county, she’ll have that voter’s information already, she said.

“It will be faster communication,” Plunkett said.

It provides a real-time check and balance, Aguilar said. If somebody shows up at a polling location and checks in to vote after having already voted by mail, the system will flag it, Aguilar said. It provides a live-status of every voter across the state. As soon as a ballot is cured, the system will be updated in real-time.

“I think it helps ensure that we’re counting every vote across the state,” he said.

VREMS won’t help results come out any faster on Election Night, however, as tabulation is separate from the actual election management and the voter registration system, Aguilar said. County clerks are responsible for tabulating, he said.

Aguilar said the new system also helps bring Nevada up to speed with the latest cybersecurity technology.

“We know there are bad actors out there, and we needed to do everything we could to ensure to protect the system and to protect Nevada voters,” he said.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.