How Nevada's elections will change with new 2025 laws

LAS VEGAS — New laws from the 2025 legislative session aim to increase accessibility to Nevada’s elections and improve voters’ experiences.

Election reform was a major focus in Carson City, though bills that sought to drastically change Nevada’s elections were blocked by the governor, including legislation to implement voter ID requirements and to allow nonpartisan voters to participate in primaries.

Other bills seeking changes were successful, from requiring that sample ballots be sent before official mail ballots to disclosing campaign advertisements made with artificial intelligence.

“Everything we tried to do this session has been focused on the voter experience and the voter perspective,” said Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar.

The major highlights

Aguilar said the biggest highlight from the legislative session for him was the continued investment into modernizing the state’s voter registration system.

Nevada appropriated over $27 million to go toward merging Clark County with the other 16 counties into one Voter Registration Election Management Solution system, known as VREMS.

Last August, the state launched its top-down voter registration and election management system, which collects and stores voter registration information from all counties. Clark County implemented the system in 2023, and the 16 other counties joined the program in 2024. Now, the two will merge together, Aguilar said.

Aguilar said putting all the counties on one system will allow the state to do a better job with voter rolls and build transparency by providing real-time information about the elections process.

“There’s consistency from county to county,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “There’s consistency in polling location to polling location. The security and safety of the election is stronger because everybody’s operating off of one unified system that has strong cybersecurity.”

The secretary of state’s office was also provided $1.5 million for voter education and outreach through Senate Bill 488. That money will allow counties to send text messages to voters about upcoming elections or if their ballot signatures need curing.

Other new laws aim to improve voters’ experience, Aguilar said.

For instance, sample ballots now must be mailed before mail ballots, thanks to a new law put forward by Republican Assemblymember Gregory Hafen and Democratic Speaker Steve Yeager. In 2024, voters expressed confusion when they received their official mail ballots before their sample ballots, which provide voter information about what will appear on the official ballot and includes pros and cons for each ballot question.

County or city clerks must also recruit election board officers for polling places on tribal reservations and provide them with training on the reservation, unless a tribe opts to not participate, thanks to the passage of Senate Bill 421, which aims to increase voter participation in Nevada’s Indigenous communities.

The new law expands on a bill passed in the 2023 Legislature requiring clerks to establish polling places and ballot drop boxes on tribal lands. There were staffing shortages in several locations, including the Shoshone Paiute Tribe of Duck Valley, which had to raise more than $5,000 to staff their polling place, according to Jennifer Willett, the Nevada senior campaign manager for All Voting is Local.

“It’s a minor shift, but it’ll impact a lot of people,” Willett said. “Over time, people will know that they can go there, and they’ll be able to vote in their community confidently at a staffed polling place.”

Another new law, AB 367, aims to improve accessibility to non-English speaking voters. The law creates a language access coordinator in the secretary of state’s office and requires the office to make sure voting materials and other election information are available in at least seven of the most commonly spoken languages in Nevada.

It also requires the secretary of state to establish a toll-free telephone number voters can use to receive language interpretation assistance for an election. A voter who may be deaf or hard of hearing can also use a mobile device to access interpretive services including American Sign Language. Aguilar said his office was doing that work already, but the bill codifies those practices into law.

Nevada is the third most diverse state in the nation, with one in three Nevadans speaking a language other than English at home and nearly 4 percent of Nevadans having a hearing difficulty, Willett said.

“We think that dismantling any barriers for people that don’t speak English as their first language, or aren’t comfortable speaking English, should be able to register to vote, learn about voting and candidates and cast their ballot using any options that they want,” Willett said.

Chuck Muth, a conservative blogger who has long fought to clean up the state’s voter rolls, said overall he thinks session was a “wash” when it came to election reform. Lombardo vetoed bills that Muth said would have harmed Nevada, but not much was done to enhance election security, he said. Muth would have liked to see changes to the mail ballot deadline so that they could not arrive after Election Day, though less than 1 percent of ballots arrive after Election Day, according to Aguilar.

Campaigning changes

Nevadans can expect to see some changes to campaigning ahead of future elections.

Any AI-generated campaign communication — such as a campaign advertisement supporting or opposing a candidate — must disclose that it was made with artificial intelligence after the passage of AB 73.

The new law addresses the rising use of AI-generated materials as a cost-effective alternative to traditional ways of creating content, and it comes on the heels of experts expressing concern about the role artificial intelligence will play in elections.

Aguilar said the goal of the law is to give voters the context and the source of the information that they’re seeing and relying on when deciding how to vote.

Muth said he discloses when he uses AI in his newsletter, but he thinks that should be voluntary.

“I just think it’s probably problematic whenever the government gets involved,” Muth said.

Another new law to reduce intimidation and violence in campaigns. AB 123 prohibits a person from making statements that threaten or intimidate a candidate for public office.

The law was sponsored by Democratic Assemblymember Hanadi Nadeem, the first Muslim woman elected to the Legislature. She put forward the bill after experiencing death threats while running for Assembly.

“It was truly a horrific experience I do not wish upon anyone, whether it be a fellow candidate, voter or Nevadan,” Nadeem said during the bill’s hearing. “No one should have to fear for their life or to be discouraged from running for office because of the actions of another.”

Aguilar said that bill goes back to overall safety and security of elections, and it also encourages participation.

“We want people to run for office because the more diverse perspective we get, the stronger the state we’re going to be,” Aguilar said. “And if people aren’t running because they’re fearful, that’s the problem.”

Another new law, AB 491, requires elected officers to be registered to vote in the state, district, county or township where the officer is required to reside.

“That’s the intent, I think, and hopefully it acts as an encouragement to say, if you’re going to run for office, that you actually live in the community you’re voted to represent,” Aguilar said.

___