Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske says 2016 election critical

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske told Carson Rotary members on Tuesday the 2016 elections are critical and her office’s challenge is to make sure they run smoothly and fairly.

To that end, she said she and her staff have already visited all 17 county election officials in their offices to get a handle on what their issues and needs are and talked with two former secretaries of state as well as two former governors. She said they all told her to focus on training.

“Twenty-16 will be one of the most important elections in decades,” she said. “That’s why we are focusing on training.”

With a number of new clerks and voter registrars since the last go-around, she said that will be key to making the primaries, early voting and the General election run well and within the law.

To chair the election task force, she said she recruited former longtime Carson City Clerk Recorder Alan Glover. He retired from office last election cycle

The equipment, she said, “is safe.” Nevada’s electronic voting machines, Cegavske said, should be good for the next two elections or more. To make sure, she said, Nevada managed to buy some more machines from California.

One issue she ran into repeatedly in rural Nevada, she said, is the lack of connectivity.

“One of the biggest problems we have is getting connected to the Internet,” she said.

She said the Secretary of State’s office isn’t alone there, that she learned during the Prison Commission meeting earlier Tuesday rural prisons are also having problems getting connected.

As for the allegations of election fraud, Cegavske said, “what we’ve seen so far, it’s human error.”

There have been two convictions for election fraud in recent years: both of them involving Republicans who got caught attempting to prove how easy it is to vote more than once.