Bill would replace Nevada voting machines

A bill that would pay to replace all of Nevada’s electronic voting machines was introduced in the Assembly on Thursday.

Assembly Bill 519 would provide a total of $8 million to the Secretary of State’s Elections Division.

County elections officials have repeatedly told lawmakers the Sequoia machines are now so old they’re failing, causing numerous problems for poll workers in early voting as well as on election day. Those machines are now more than a decade old and were the state’s first electronic voting system, replacing the old punch card voting machines.

Assembly Ways and Means Chairwoman Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas, told committee members the idea is to get new machines, primarily form a company called Dominion, installed in the counties before the mid-term elections in 18 months so the bugs can be worked out by the time general elections are held.

She said the counties have choice in what to buy but “most seem comfortable with Dominion machines.” She said one advantage of those machines is a lot of the equipment is “off the shelf” so if a printer dies, they can just go buy another one. The bill will provide $4.7 million to Clark County, $1.7 million to Washoe and the remaining funding to Nevada’s other counties.

She said the totals were reduced because Clark and Washoe have already purchased some new machines.