Nevada Ranked Last by Election Integrity Report
Nevada has earned the lowest election integrity score among all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, according to an August 2025 Meyers Report on election laws and policies. The state scored just 30 out of 100 points, falling significantly below the U.S. average of 60 and the international average of 81.
The report cites Nevada’s universal mail-in balloting, where ballots are sent to all active voters, and its lenient ballot harvesting rules as key reasons for the low score. These practices are absent in the 36 countries reviewed, which averaged higher scores. For comparison, Mississippi led U.S. states with a score of 83, while Kenya topped the international list at 95. Nevada joins other low-scoring states, including Illinois and D.C. (both 36), Vermont (37), and California (38).
Beyond the analysis in the Meyers Report, it's worth examining reports and rankings from other organizations to provide diverse perspectives on Nevada's election system. Currently, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard ranks Nevada 47th out of 51, citing weaknesses in voter ID laws and absentee ballot security. In 2020, an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal detailed a journalist's experiment in which Clark County accepted and counted eight out of nine mail ballots with deliberately mismatched signatures. In 2022, the Election Integrity Project Nevada, a local watchdog group, submitted a report to county clerks and registrars across all 17 Nevada counties, identifying approximately 40,000 voter registration irregularities. In contrast, MIT’s Elections Performance Index, which focuses on administration metrics like voter turnout and wait times, ranked Nevada 15th in 2022 and noted strong 2020 turnout. The National Vote at Home Institute awards Nevada a five-star rating for its accessible mail-in voting policies, emphasizing voter convenience. These differing evaluations reflect priorities ranging from fraud prevention to accessibility.
In March 2025, President Trump (R) signed an executive order mandating proof of citizenship for federal voter registration. The DOJ then requested Nevada's Secretary of State's Office (NVSOS) confirm compliance with the Help America Vote Act. NVSOS responded with a plan focused on the TotalVote system, which assigns unique voter IDs, detects duplicates in real-time, and updates rolls daily via agency collaborations for tracking felons, deaths, protected addresses, and eligibility. Security includes firewalls, multi-factor authentication, weekly scans, backups, and physical protections. The plan acknowledges potential challenges, such as staff bias or errors that could risk voter disenfranchisement.
NVSOS publishes quarterly reports on investigations into election violations. According to the reports, double-voting complaints accounted for just 0.02% of total ballots cast, with most incidents arising from administrative errors rather than intentional fraud. The office intends to sustain its transparency initiatives while partnering with stakeholders to refine election laws ahead of the 2026 cycle.
President Trump (R) recently announced plans to lead a movement aimed at eliminating mail-in voting nationwide. NVSOS Aguilar (D) and Attorney General Ford (D) have vowed to vigorously oppose this proposal through legal challenges, arguing it would reduce voter access—particularly in rural and urban areas where mail voting is prevalent—and potentially disenfranchise thousands of eligible voters if enacted.
