Nevada's primary election will be conducted through mail-in ballots this year. The decision was made in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"The ability to recruit and train poll workers was not certain, the ability to have available polling locations was increasingly uncertain as well," said Wayne Thorley, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections. "Also, to limit the spread of the virus and protect the health of safety of all Nevadan - voters, elections workers- the decision was made to conduct this election by mail and it's simple, easy and secure."

Registered voters should get their ballots in the mail by the end of this week and they can start voting immediately.

"As soon as you get your ballot, you don't have to wait, you can mark your ballot and send it back immediately," Thorley said. "It's a real simple process; you open your ballot, review the instructions to make sure you're marking it correctly, and the most important step is you have to sign your ballot return envelope before sending it back. If you fail to sign your ballot return envelope, your vote won't be counted. We will contact you to give you an opportunity to correct that, but it's really important to sign that envelope. It's postage prepaid, pre-addressed, so put the ballot in that envelope and put it in the mail."

He says the verification process is the same as in-person voting.

"Every voter is only allowed to cast one ballot," Thorley said. "We do signature verification on the return envelope to make sure it's the voter that voted that ballot. That verification is exactly like the verification we do for in-person voting. All ballots and envelopes are bar-coded and assigned to a specific voter, so if someone other than that voter votes that ballot, we'll know. if a ballot gets lost in the mail, we can void it and issue a new one. So even if a voter does have multiple ballots, they can only vote once. Voting by mail has a long history in the United States and we have processes in place to make sure it's secure."

Ballots must be postmarked by the day of the primary, June 9, 2020.

"The ballots have to be postmarked by June 9 but we will be receiving ballots after election day that we will count, so there will be a delay in posting complete election results," Thorley said. "We will post election results to-date on our website every day, but they will be incomplete until we finish counting all the ballots, which could take up to 7-10 days after the election."

He says the way the ballots are tabulated is a bit different as well.

"Counting paper ballots is a little different," he said. "When a person votes on a machine, the tabulation is done on a machine that you plug a memory device into. When a person votes on a paper ballot, it's run through a scanner. So it's still read by a machine; we aren't hand-counting these ballots. Any ballot the scanner can't read because it's torn, ripped or damaged will go to a bipartisan review board to see if they can determine the voter's intent, but most votes will be counted by scanning on a machine."

Nevadans can register to vote or change their personal information up until June 4. There will be limited opportunities for those that can't vote by mail to vote in person, but election officials are hoping those that are able to vote by mail, take advantage of it.

"We're encouraging all voters to vote their mail ballot; it's the safest way to vote," Thorley said.

Voters who haven't received a ballot by the end of this week should contact their county's election office.

There are resources to help voters through the mail-in process: https://www.mailitinnevada.com/

https://www.registertovotenv.gov/

https://www.facebook.com/NVSOS/

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