MINUTES OF THE
SENATE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
Sixty-seventh Session
March 26, 1993
The Senate Committee on Government Affairs was called to order by Chairman Ann O'Connell, at 11:30 a.m., on Friday, March 26, 1993, in Room 119 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Meeting Agenda. Exhibit B is the Attendance Roster.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Senator Ann O'Connell, Chairman
Senator Sue Lowden, Vice Chairman
Senator William J. Raggio
Senator Dean A. Rhoads
Senator Thomas J. Hickey
Senator Leonard V. Nevin
Senator Matthew Q. Callister
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Caren Jenkins, Principal Research Analyst
Tanya Morrison, Committee Secretary
OTHERS PRESENT:
Sam Hiliard, Detective, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, (METRO) Criminal Intelligence Section
Van Graham, District Attorney's Office, Clark County
Marlene Henderson, Registrar of Voters, Washoe County
James Dan, Northern Regional Representative, Libertarian Party of Nevada
Dale Erquiaga, Elections Deputy, Nevada Secretary of State
Jan Gilbert, Nevada League of Women Voters
Richard Puckett, Chairman, Libertarian Party of Clark County
Chairman O'Connell opened the meeting on Senate Bill (S.B.) 250.
SENATE BILL 250: Makes various changes to provisions governing elections.
Sam Hiliard, Detective, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Criminal Intelligence Section, temporarily assigned to the Elections Fraud Task Force, spoke to the committee on S.B. 250. He stated:
Basically the Elections Fraud Task Force was formed by Sheriff John Moran after numerous allegations had basically filtered into the police department concerning election fraud. This is somewhat new territory for the police department. We have not investigated very many instances of election fraud in the past. What happened was, our investigation since November of 1992 centered mostly on deputy field registrars. We are looking at over a dozen deputy field registrars that are going to be charged with multiple felony counts. Some of those felony counts are detailed as filing a false document, forgery and some of those deputy registrars turned out to be felons, which are persons not even eligible to vote let alone register other people to vote. What happened was, there is no specific law or statute that we were able to uncover. There is federally, however, but as far as the state level we didn't come up with a specific law for some of the instances that we found concerning these registrars, so we had to research the law and find the correct charge to charge these persons with. Let me give you an example of some of the things we had. We had a group of registrars, numerous subjects that were all residing in a downtown apartment complex. They had discovered that the democratic party was paying a $2 bounty for every democrat registered, in addition to the 10 cents that is paid per statute for every person registered. When they discovered that there was $2 they could obtain for every person they registered, they got together and some of them went out and diligently registered democrats. I mean legitimately registered people to vote. Some of the other group got together and found a way that they would go out and register people to vote such as at grocery stores, DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety), our own METRO sheriff's card office, etc. and when they would register these people to vote...let me just give you an example of what would happen. They would come up to you as a perspective voter and they would say, "Would you like to register to vote?" and of course you would say yes and they would say, "Okay, lets go ahead. I will fill this information out for you." They would fill in the name, the date of birth, social security number and whatever is required on the registration affidavit and then they would sometimes ask what party affiliation would you like me to mark for the party affiliations. They would just simply say, "What are you, a republican, democrat, independent, what?" An example of some of the crimes we found were the person would reply to the registrar they would like to be a republican and they would say no problem and then go ahead and fill out the form then turn it over and have the person sign, however, they would either cover the box that marks the affiliation or just leave it blank, have the voter sign the affidavit then they would say thank you and turn around and mark democrat on there as the person walked away or later mark democrat then turn that in and collect the $2 bounty for that party affiliation. On those particular persons, which is mostly what we found, we are charging each one of those persons with filing a false document because we consider and the D.A.'s office considers that voter registration affidavit to be an official document. So, when they altered that document is now not an accurate portrayal of what the person wanted to be so we are charging them with filing a false document which is a felony crime. The other crimes we found which were several were a group of these deputy registrars got together...let me back up just a minute. When a perspective deputy registrar goes down and gets appointed by the election department they take an oath of office. On that oath it says they will uphold the rules and regulations and they will not try and persuade people to be a particular party, they are not laboring under a felony conviction, they will return all of their affidavits within a certain amount of time, etc. They take the oath then they are assigned a group of blank affidavits that are numbered that are specifically categorized and numbered so that the election department can keep track of those affidavits. However, one of the problems that we discovered through talking to some of these suspects and through our investigation was that they were also given by the democratic party and by some other parties and had access to were group stacks of mail-in registration forms that are not categorized, logged, nothing. No track is kept of these mail-in registration forms and in addition, on the mail-in registration forms it only requires the signature of the person registering to vote. It does not require a signature of an official person such as a deputy registrar or Clark County official, or anybody, it just requires the signature of the person registering to vote. So, what happened was, this group of deputy registrars got together in this particular apartment complex, sat down and they took the Centel First Source phone book, opened it up and started randomly registering people to vote and then forging their name on that registration form. They did this with maybe several hundred, we are not sure exactly and the reason we cannot pin down exactly how many they did is because in the beginning of this...the democratic party, by the way, if I can say this particular facet of the democratic party was very cooperative with us in our investigation and they themselves had discovered that there may have been some wrongdoing on the part of these registrars and try to circumvent and I will explain that. What would happen is they would take these forged mail-in registration forms, take them to the democratic party, get paid their $2 bounty for every democrat and of course they were all democrats, the democratic party would log the affidavit number and who actually got paid for that. That is the only record we had and the only way we were able to obtain this information. Then in the beginning, before the democratic party was able to catch onto what was going on, they entrusted the deputy field registrar to take those mail-in registration forms, the completed ones and turn them in to the election department. What happened was, in the beginning of this those deputy registrars, because their own names were not on those forms, they trashed them, simply threw them away and discarded them. However, through our investigation we found that some of them had actually made it to the election department and we were able to uncover maybe 10 or 12 that were actual forgeries that we are charging a couple of the deputy field registrars with actually forging these persons names. The information contained on the mail-in registration form contained the correct name, the correct address because that is what is in the phone book and the correct phone number, however, the date of birth, social security number and signature were all fabricated. That is mainly the crux of what our investigation centered on. We had some other allegations that had come in pertaining to persons who had voted twice and those turned out to be very minor. They turned out to be not criminal intent, no wrongdoing on their part. One in particular, I will give you an example, is actually a United States senator's mother, not naming any names, she is an elderly woman and she wanted to vote absentee so she received an absentee ballot in the mail and she went ahead and filled it out and mailed it in. But then she started watching on TV (television) and on the news media that they were having problems with the absentee ballots and so she got scared and panicked and at the time of the actual election she thought, well if they are having all of these problems my absentee ballot isn't going to count so she went down and voted. So we took that and just investigated it, but of course we are not going to charge in an incident like that because it was simply an error on the voters part. The other part of our investigation centered on the picking up of absentee ballots which is a gross misdemeanor. The one of them was a particular individual that has been charged that was working for a particular person running for county commission and this person went out and was actually picking up absentee ballots which again is a gross misdemeanor and a violation. I can tell you just in summary that one of the main things that we saw where there is lack of control or problems is first off, as I mentioned in the beginning, some of these deputy field registrars turned out to be ex-felons which they are actually convicted persons. One of them, I won't specifically identify him, he is a convicted person for forgery and counterfeiting which goes right along with what he is accused of doing now. Another individual which has been in the media down here lately is a person who is a convicted felon who was taking persons who he had registered to vote, who matched his physical description somewhat and writing down their name, date of birth, social security number, address and telephone number and when he was getting stopped by the police here he was using that persons name as an alias and he, in fact, received four traffic tickets under this alias name and they had actually gone to warrant because, of course, they were not paid and had we not discovered this in the timely manner that we did, this individual's name he was using, that person would have been arrested for those traffic warrants and of course it would have been a terrible miscarriage there that that person would have been arrested. So, that is pretty much it for right now. Like I said in summary, the mail-in registration forms, the lack of controls on those caused these individuals to have a lot of freedom to do what they wanted with those mail-ins. We did not find any blatant forgeries on the actual registration affidavits that they were entrusted with because, according to them, by their own admission, those were accountable documents and they felt they would get caught if they forged those, that is why they just forged the mail-ins. Later on, as I had stated earlier, the democratic party...after they found out or started to suspect that there were some problems, they no longer entrusted the deputy field registrars with turning in their own registration forms. They would go ahead and turn them in to the election department. I will take any questions now.
Senator Hickey asked about the federal law with regard to election fraud. Detective Hiliard told the committee his department made an agreement with the United States (U.S.) Attorney's Office, which handles the prosecution of federal crimes. This agreement was they would go ahead and conduct the investigation on a state level and if they ran into a problem with the state courts concerning prosecution they would then turn the investigation results over to the U.S. Attorney's Office and they would then consider prosecuting on a federal level. He pointed out it is not necessary to do both, it is only necessary to prosecute on one level.
Senator Lowden told Detective Hiliard the committee has heard testimony that some citizens have tried to present evidence to METRO and METRO has not wanted to see it. Detective Hiliard stated he made personal contact with the individuals who have conducted their own investigations into some of the allegations of election fraud. He explained some of the allegations may warrant follow-up. He told the committee he asked these people to bring in all of the evidence they have and they were a little hesitant about having this evidence seized from them. He explained to these people he would make Xerox copies and return their originals to them. He told the committee they are planning to meet within 2 weeks and they are going to bring in the material they have.
Van Graham, District Attorney's Office, Clark County, spoke to the committee regarding S.B. 250. He stated as Detective Hiliard testified there are a number of matters currently awaiting action. He told the committee he spoke with Chief Deputy Eric Jorgensen this morning and he is awaiting some additional information from the task force. He pointed out they are trying to correct some of the procedural and potential criminal problems which occurred in the last registration process. He stated the penalties for cheating in the election process will have to come from the legislature. Mr. Graham stated they will be presenting their evidence to the grand jury within the next several weeks.
Jan Gilbert, Nevada League of Women Voters, spoke to the committee on S.B. 250. She explained she wanted to address one section of the bill. She stated section 42 which clarifies the legislative intent that all mail-in registrants must vote in person the first time. She said she has a personalized view of this because the Nevada League of Women Voters was asked to participate in a rock the vote event at the local high school. Ms. Gilbert recruited a couple of registrars who were Carson City residents because she is not. She explained they went to the high school to register first-time voters at the high school. She explained there is a problem with the restrictions on mail-in voting because of military personnel, retired individuals and students going off to college.
Senator Raggio explained to Ms. Gilbert that the committee has heard testimony regarding nonexistent individuals or dead individuals being registered under the mail-in registration process. He stated that is the reason section 42 was placed in the law. This will ensure the individual will show up at some point to be identified.
Ms. Gilbert told the committee she feels this law disenfranchises the young voters. She agreed these people should make the effort to go and register to vote, but they do not and therefore it helps to go to the schools and register these young people.
Senator Callister stated his district is full of mobile home parks and senior facilities which are filling on a daily basis with people new to Southern Nevada. He explained many of these individuals are house bound routinely and he stated this is not a small number of people. He maintained he has a concern regarding section 42 in this bill because he did not hear of the types of fraud Senator Raggio was referring to and he feels this section will disenfranchise a significant number of seniors.
Chairman O'Connell told Senator Callister the committee had heard quite a bit of testimony regarding fraud with mail-in registration.
Senator Lowden stated in her district there were individuals she talked to who had no idea they had been registered to vote and some of them were not even citizens.
Senator Callister explained he feels the fraud they need to be most concerned about are individuals who are illegitimately registered and then they vote. He explained if someone was just illegitimately registered it is certainly fraud on the party or group paying the bounty for those individuals, but he is not sure it resulted in fraud on the system.
Senator Hickey stated this committee should look at this bill very carefully, but he added the point is well taken and he understands the concerns of Senator Callister and Ms. Gilbert. He suggested the subcommittee look at this section and perhaps another step could be taken.
Senator Raggio stated if somebody wanted to send in a bunch of registrations and then send in applications for absentee ballots, those people could never exist and nobody would ever know about. That is why this law was implemented. The individuals only have to show up the first time they vote.
Senator Callister told Senator Raggio his explanation made sense. But, he stated the evidence he is looking for is evidence not that people abuse the registration process, but that they registered illegally and then voted.
Chairman O'Connell shared with the committee information she had received on absentee ballots. She explained some individuals had gotten the plans for a housing development which only had foundations at that time. These individuals then found out the addresses from the planning department and they used those addresses and fictitious names and voted by mail.
Marlene Henderson, Registrar of Voters, Washoe County, gave the committee members her written suggestion of amendments to S.B. 250, (Exhibit C). She told the committee there is also a list of the cost of her software in this exhibit. Ms. Henderson brought with her one of her votomatics to demonstrate to the committee how difficult it is to punch the wrong holes.
James Dan, Northern Regional Representative, Libertarian Party of Nevada, told the committee he had already submitted his testimony in writing during the meeting last Wednesday. He made suggestions to the committee regarding voter registration. He suggested students in high school be allowed to register to vote during a civics class. He drew attention to the fact that in apartment buildings the managers could become registrars and help register the elderly. Mr. Dan pointed out how easy it would be to commit fraud with the register-by-mail process and then they could vote by absentee ballot.
Richard Puckett, Chairman, Libertarian Party of Clark County, spoke on S.B. 250. He suggested individuals who were home-bound call the registrar's office to have someone come to their home to register them in person. Mr. Puckett stated mail-in registration was the biggest area for potential problems where individuals would submit fake names for registration and then vote fake names. He also voiced his concern that only a registered democrat or a registered republican are able to work at the election polls on election day and he feels this is an unfair requirement.
Chairman O'Connell stated she did not feel this was still a requirement to work at the election polls or that possibly it was a misunderstanding. She asked Dale Erquiaga to address this concern.
Dale Erquiaga, Elections Deputy, Nevada Secretary of State, addressed the question posed by Mr. Puckett. He pointed out the law states that the registered voters appointed as election board officers for any precinct or district must not be all of the same political party. He iterated there is no reference made to major or minor political party, they simply cannot all be of the same political party.
Mr. Puckett told the committee another concern he has is allowing the election computer to be hooked up by phone so any computer could call into the election department computer on election night. He stated there needs to be safeguards as far as this computer is concerned. He asked the computer not be hooked up by phone link because people familiar with computers can get past the security and create problems.
Mr. Puckett also expressed concern with section 53. He suggested adding to this section the requirement to reconcile the poll book numbers to the abstract numbers. Another problem he sees is that poll watchers should be allowed at the transfer points, but as it currently stands, no private citizen is allowed to be at transfer points and he does not see the need for that. Mr. Puckett also suggests a requirement in the law that ballots be canvassed. He would like to see a picture identification be presented at the time of voting.
Chairman O'Connell closed the hearing on S.B. 250 and opened the hearing on Bill Draft Request (BDR) 25-604.
Bill Draft Request 25-604: Provides for establishment of capital improvement districts.
SENATOR NEVIN MOVED FOR COMMITTEE INTRODUCTION OF BDR 25-604.
SENATOR HICKEY SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION CARRIED. (SENATOR RHOADS WAS ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
* * * * *
Chairman O'Connell opened the hearing on Bill Draft Request (BDR) 23-810.
Bill Draft Request 23-810: Clarifies procedures for state agencies to obtain approval of an employed person to perform data processing for agency.
SENATOR HICKEY MOVED FOR COMMITTEE INTRODUCTION OF BDR 23-810.
SENATOR LOWDEN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION CARRIED. (SENATOR RHOADS WAS ABSENT FOR THE VOTE.)
* * * * *
There being no further business, Chairman O'Connell adjourned the meeting at 11:50 a.m.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
Tanya Morrison,
Committee Secretary
APPROVED BY:
Senator Ann O'Connell, Chairman
DATE:
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Senate Committee on Government Affairs
March 26, 1993
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