MINUTES OF THE meeting
of the
ASSEMBLY Committee on Elections, Procedures, and Ethics
Seventy-Second Session
April 1, 2003
The Committee on Elections, Procedures, and Ethicswas called to order at 3:57 p.m., on Tuesday, April 1, 2003. Chairwoman Chris Giunchigliani presided in Room 3138 of the Legislative Building, Carson City, Nevada. Exhibit A is the Agenda. Exhibit B is the Guest List. All exhibits are available and on file at the Research Library of the Legislative Counsel Bureau.
Note: These minutes are compiled in the modified verbatim style. Bracketed material indicates language used to clarify and further describe testimony. Actions of the Committee are presented in the traditional legislative style.
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Ms. Chris Giunchigliani, Chairwoman
Mr. Marcus Conklin, Vice Chairman
Mr. Bernie Anderson
Mr. Bob Beers
Mr. Chad Christensen
Mr. Tom Grady
Ms. Kathy McClain
Mr. Bob McCleary
Ms. Peggy Pierce
Ms. Valerie Weber
COMMITTEE MEMBERS ABSENT:
None
GUEST LEGISLATORS PRESENT:
Assemblyman Tom Collins, District No. 1, Clark County
STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
Michelle Van Geel, Committee Policy Analyst
Kelly Fisher, Committee Secretary
Scott Wasserman, Chief Deputy Legislative Counsel, Legislative Counsel Bureau
OTHERS PRESENT:
Dan Burk, Washoe County Registrar of Voters
Janine Hansen, Nevada Committee for Full Statehood
Dean Heller, Secretary of State of Nevada
Stacy Jennings, Nevada Commission on Ethics
Barbara Reed, Douglas County Clerk-Treasurer
Merritt Yochum, Independent American Party
Lucille Lusk, Nevada Concerned Citizens
Renee Parker, Chief Deputy Secretary of State
Larry Lomax, Clark County Registrar of Voters
Alan Glover, Carson City Clerk-Recorder
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Good afternoon. [Roll called] We have a quorum. We’re going to take the bills somewhat out of order. First, I’ve asked an old familiar face to come to the table and talk about the sections that we were considering last week on a bill [A.B. 375] regarding tweaking some of the voting squiggles and giggles and whatever that created lots of mail-in precincts last redistricting. You should have the maps in front of you (Exhibit C).
Scott Wasserman, Chief Deputy Legislative Counsel:
[Introduced himself] At the hearing that you were referring to, you heard some testimony regarding the complications that arose by the redistricting process in that each plan for the Senate, the Assembly, the Board of Regents, and the State Board of Education were adopted independent of the other plans.
Mr. Lomax has presented approximately 45 examples of precincts that have fewer than 200 registered voters that had to be created because of the unique overlap of these various districts. Some of the variations were caused by as little as one census block being different between one precinct and the next, and that one census block might have zero population. Because the Senate district was drawn without consideration of the Assembly district, when you lay them on top of each other, that could be the difference, just one census block of zero population.
Kathy Steinle from the Information unit of the Legislative Counsel Bureau—and Kathy is also known as the “redistricting map guru”—made the changes proposed by Mr. Lomax on the computer, and she also ran some new statistical data, which is the statistical handouts that you have below your maps (Exhibit D).
[Mr. Wasserman, continued] In some instances, even though there are only 200 registered in a particular census block, there might be approximately 2,000 people in that census block. When you make some of the changes that were proposed, you could be affecting up to 2,000 in an Assembly or Senate district. Pursuant to Section 13 of Article 15 of the Nevada Constitution, the census serves as the basis of representation in both houses of the Legislature. When we make these changes, we have to look at the total population and not the number of registered voters.
If you had enacted all of the changes that were proposed by Mr. Lomax—and unbeknownst to him, because he was looking at registered voters for these various precincts, and we converted that to total population—and if you had made all of those changes, you would have put the overall population of the Senate into a prima facie showing of unconstitutionality, because the population deviation between the largest and the smallest Senate district would have exceeded 10 percent. Under United States Supreme Court rulings, if you exceed 10 percent population deviation between your smallest and largest district of the legislative plan, it’s prima facie unconstitutional. That means that the state would have to come back and justify why you have that population deviation. It also would have violated the rules that were adopted last session for redistricting of the Legislature.
As a result of that, your direction was to limit the focus to population changes that were proposed by Mr. Lomax that would affect 50 people or fewer in each instance. When you’re affecting only 50 people between the Assembly/Senate districts, or the Board of Education, or the Board of Regents, that would have an insignificant statistical impact. What you have in front of you are all of the Clark County changes that would fall under that population number of 50 people.
We also have two changes that were submitted by Mr. Glover for Carson City. Those maps should be coming shortly. You don’t have those in front of you yet.
The only exceptions to including all of Mr. Lomax’s proposals of changes that involved 50 people or fewer were two that were excluded. One is because it would have created a noncontiguous district. We would have had part of the district just touching it, just one point. The other was because what Mr. Lomax had proposed on his map was not something that we could change by using census blocks. It would have split a census block, and we don’t have a way to either describe that or to determine what the actual population would be. Those two were excluded.
[Mr. Wasserman continued] I have a couple of overall notes. None of these changes affected legislator incumbents. On the Board of Regents and State Board of Education, we don’t have the residences of all of the members of the boards, so I can’t speak to that. The biggest change of any of the proposals would involve 47 people in a State Board of Education district. That district has 196,697 people according to the 2001 census. The change of 47 people would only represent 0.03 of 1 percent of a population change between the two districts involved. That’s the largest change proposed in any of these maps.
If you were to enact all of these changes, there would be no impact on the overall population deviation of any of the plans for the Assembly, the Senate, the Board of Regents, or the State Board of Education.
What I’d like to do is go through a couple of maps to give you an example of how to read these, and I’ll just go through a couple, unless you want me to go through all of them.
Starting with Clark County Senate Adjustment 1, it says from District 6 to District 3 population change 0. Does everybody have that on top? If you look at the map, you’ll see the yellow line that starts on Tenaya Street and starts going down the page. That yellow line is the existing senatorial boundary line. If you look, following Lake Mead across, you cross United States Highway 95. You can see that block that’s in green. The yellow line borders it. To the left you have United States Highway 95. That’s the block that currently, if you were looking at the yellow line, it would actually be in Senatorial District number 6. The proposal is to change that block into Clark County Senatorial District 3. There are zero people in that block according to the 2000 Census. There may be development there, and there may be homes there, which presumably, there’s somebody there, or Mr. Lomax wouldn’t have a mail-in precinct there. There must be new development, or a house, or it’s possible the Census Bureau missed somebody in that particular block. That’s how these maps are set up. It would not change the statistics at all.
Looking on the second map, Clark County Senate Adjustments 2 from District 11 to District 7, you can see again the yellow line.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
This little green section currently is in Senate 6. If we were to make any changes, we would put it into Senate 3, correct? This wedge here?
Scott Wasserman:
That is correct.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
The new boundary line would actually go alongside the purple where the 95 line is.
Scott Wasserman:
That’s correct. Actually, that is a good example. You can see what probably happened here is when one district was created, whoever was drawing a line for that House said, “Well, it makes sense. You just go straight down U.S. Highway 95.” When the other house is drawing a district, they looked at this and for whatever reason decide to follow Lake Mead across to Harvest and come down Harvest. When you overlap them, this is what it creates.
Assemblyman Anderson:
I’m just trying to follow the map. In looking at our maps, since you’re taking us through this one, I want to make sure I’m doing this correctly. We’re supposed to look at the yellow line to tell us where the current line is, but then the colors as to which area is going to move from one to another, the green area between Rainbow and Highway 95, in this particular instance, is the change. We’re supposed to know that because the color change took place there?
Scott Wasserman:
That’s correct.
Assemblyman Anderson:
If I were to look at the old map, I would see Senate 6 extending all the way to Rainbow, right?
Scott Wasserman:
Yes, that is absolutely correct. That would actually be the same color, a purplish gray.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Scott, do you want to go on to the second map? Kathy, how are you doing? Welcome. It’s good to see you. The “guru-ette.”
Scott Wasserman:
Did you miss my introduction of Kathy Steinle from Information Systems, our redistricting map guru?
On the second map, you follow the line down Valley View. It goes across Harmon, down Polaris, across Tropicana, and finally down Industrial. That’s the existing senatorial boundary between Clark County District 7 and Clark County District 11. The proposal would be the area that you see in 10 would be changed from District 11 to District 7. That would involve a total population of 12 people, again according to the 2000 Census, which is what you use for redistricting purposes.
[Mr. Wasserman, continued] On the third one, we have two changes. One is from District 10 to District 41, and one is from District 16 to District 41. If you follow the boundary along the Las Vegas Boulevard to the right, currently that is Assembly District 41, and to the left is Assembly District 10. All of those blue census blocks—each one of these numbers represents a separate census block, and it shows you the population. If you add those up, it looks like 22, which is confirmed at the top of the map. Twenty-two people would go from Assembly District 10 into Assembly District 41. The second change in this map is from District 16 to District 41. If you look at the top, you follow the Airport Connector down across over to Grier. You can see that block to the right of Grier, which is currently in Assembly District 16. We would move that into Assembly District 41 if you were to adopt this change. It’s kind of like a Rubik’s Cube. If I get them backwards, someone stop me.
The next map is Clark County Assembly District 3. The change is from Assembly District 37 to District 34. The population change is zero. Coming across—it’s above Saybrook Point, and it’s coming across. You can see the block above the line, and that would go from Assembly District 37 into Assembly District 34, and the boundary line would move up above that block. That population is zero.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Is the red currently in District 37, or is the red currently in District 34?
Scott Wasserman:
The red is currently in District 37, and it’s in red here so you can see what would happen if you moved the yellow boundary line. It would then go into District 34. The yellow boundary line would go up above and around that block.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Isn’t that different than what we were doing on the other colors? I thought the other pages said the yellow line—
Scott Wasserman:
Yellow is existing.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
—is existing. It would become the next color.
Scott Wasserman:
Right. If you made that change.
Assemblyman Anderson:
What is the reason for that particular one? I’m curious as to why we would—There’s no population change there. If you’d like to try to keep things running on a continual line, Vegas Boulevard would seem to be a natural demarcation. I guess I don’t understand what the purpose of the change is.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
It’s creating a finger right in the middle. What is the rationale?
Scott Wasserman:
This is the rationale for all of these, and you’ll see more that look something like this. The problem is that while there is zero population in this block—that’s according to the 2000 Census—Mr. Lomax has at least one registered voter in there, or he wouldn’t have been creating a separate precinct for that. In fact, Kathy Steinle points out to me that is the case here. There is one registered voter in that block. That means either the census missed that person and assigned him to a different block, or the person wasn’t there when the Census Bureau did its count. It’s to eliminate that mail-in precinct. None of these are being proposed because they make better districts.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
How many are necessary to have a precinct? Do you have to have up to 1,500, or do you have to have a unique ballot style, because that crosses over?
Assemblyman Anderson:
You have to have a separate ballot for one person.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
For one person a separate ballot, so we’re trying to eliminate some of that. Thank you for reminding me, Mr. Anderson.
Scott Wasserman:
The next one is Clark County Assembly Adjustment 4, and this is going from Assembly District 2 to Assembly District 4. It involves a population change of 53 people. Again you see the yellow line running along Vista and Tony. Saugus—I don’t know these streets in Las Vegas, obviously, so if I’m not pronouncing them correctly. That’s the existing line. It would take these two blocks to the left of that line along Sun City and move it into Assembly District 4. This is an example of where one plan followed Sun City, and the other plan followed those other streets.
Assemblyman Beers:
I have a separate bill that deals with just this one issue. I didn’t know we were having the group effort. To illustrate the underlying issue for everyone, about where the capital “I” in Indian Pines is—for those of you that have this map in front of you—that is where these people used to walk across the street and vote. Now they can no longer do that. They either have to hit an early voting location, or—and actually, technically, until we change the law, they’re not supposed to be able to do that—mail in their ballot. Literally, they just walked across the street to vote two years ago. I think it’s the disenfranchising effect of that phenomenon is why we need to make these changes. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think there were 28 voters affected, or population in this?
Scott Wasserman:
There were 33. Continuing to the next map, Clark County Assembly Adjustment 5. This makes a change from Assembly District 17 to Assembly District 7. The population change, according to the census, is zero. You have the existing district boundary in yellow moving along Alexander. The proposal is to add what you see in green blocks in District 17 to Assembly District 7.
The next map, number 6, makes a change from Assembly District 11 to Assembly District 12. The population change, according to the census, would be zero. The yellow existing boundary that we’re looking at is along Sunrise. The white block above Sunrise would go from Assembly District 11 into Assembly District 12.
The next map involves Clark County Assembly District Adjustments from Assembly District 18 to Assembly District 23. The yellow existing line in the corner near Sunbonnet and Boulder, the two blocks that are in blue, would go from Assembly District 18 into Assembly District 23. It affects a population of zero. There are registered voters in there, meaning someone has either moved there since, or the Census Bureau missed them at the time.
[Mr. Wasserman continued] Clark County Assembly Adjustment 8 goes from Assembly District 8 into Assembly District 22. The triangular census block bordered by Sunset, Decatur, and the Union Pacific Railroad—Census blocks can follow any visible feature, so a railroad track is a good one for the Census Bureau to use or for local governments to set up blocks under. That block in green would go from Assembly District 8 into Assembly District 22, again with the population reported at zero.
Clark County Regents Adjustments 1 and 2 make changes from Regent District 4 to Regent District 3. You can see that there are two blocks along the corners. If you follow Sandhill down, you see blocks that include 9 people and 21 people that would go from District 4 into District 3. If you were to make that change, it would affect 30 people. The second one is just below Duck Creek, and you see that that has a population reported at zero. That would go from Regent District 4 to Regent District 3.
The next Clark County Regents Adjustments show 3 and 4, making changes from Regent District 2 to Regent District 13. The first one is a good-sized group you see going above Twain and Highland. It’s 9 census blocks, but only involves 3 people. All of those would go from Regent District 2 to Regent District 13. The second one is in that group as well. The total population is 3.
Now we’re moving into the Clark County State Board of Education Adjustments. The first one is from District 5 to District 3. If you look to the left side of the map along Western, you’ll see that there are two blocks that would be going from District 3 into District 5 with a population of zero. The 47 is in the top right corner just above the yellow blocks where you can see Rue 13, and there’s one block there that says 47. That would go from District 5 into District 3. That was the single largest change, and it involved 47 people. Statistically, that would be 0.03 of one percent. That’s the largest change.
The next one, Clark County Education, involves a change from District 6 to District 5. You see the yellow boundaries on top of the yellow blocks running across Stewart and then turning down Pecos. Right next to the right of Technology is the block that would go from District 6 into District 5. It has a population reported at zero.
The next change is Clark County Education Adjustment 4, making a change from District 3 to District 6, the blocks above Spring Mountain. The population affected there would be zero. They would move from District 3 into District 6. Each one of these would eliminate the need for a separate mail-in precinct.
[Mr. Wasserman continued] Clark County Adjustment 5 makes a change from District 4 to District 6. It involves a total population of 24 people. You can see several blocks just below Patrick that would go from District 4 into District 6.
Two maps should have been handed out to you with the changes proposed by Mr. Glover (Exhibit E). The top one shows changes from Washoe Senatorial District 4 to the Capital Senatorial District. It involves 6 people. This one has a number block, number 1050. It has a population of 6, and it would go from the Washoe 4 into the Capital District if you were to make that change.
The last change being proposed is for Carson City. From Washoe Senatorial District 4 to the Capital Senatorial District involves a population of zero, and it is the blocks above College; you see blocks 2017, 2016, 2006, and a little tiny one, block 3000.
I believe that is all of the changes that are proposed by Mr. Lomax and Mr. Glover. We have not received any proposed changes yet from Washoe County or any of the other counties.
Assemblyman Anderson:
I hate to ask this question, because I’m afraid I’m not going to like the answer. How long ago did you ask them to submit their requests to you?
Scott Wasserman:
I didn’t personally ask for the requests. Mr. Lomax had talked to various members of the Legislature and members of the Legislative Counsel Bureau when he discovered the problem in Clark County, probably shortly after redistricting. I don’t know if anybody else from the audience would have a more specific answer to that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think the question is regarding these maps. Dan [Burk], were you contacted regarding getting some maps as well from Washoe?
Dan Burk, Washoe County Registrar of Voters:
[Introduced himself] Yes, we were. Over three-quarters of the maps are finished, and the descriptions are finished for us. But our GIS person—we have only one—and both our specialists in mapping have been out sick for the last six days. We have not been able to finish the last part of the descriptions. That’s the reason why we do not have our descriptions done yet. About three-quarters of them are finished.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
We can take yours up when we get it. We moved the bill we were going to put them in, and we can either use a committee bill, or if Mr. Beers is willing, we can always use his bill if he’d grant that to us. We’re not under direct pressure this week, but we have to by next week for sure.
Dan Burk:
We’ll have it for you, Madam Chair.
Assemblyman Anderson:
I see these are the ones that came directly from the voting districts based upon zero or mail-in districts. How about other kinds of questions that you and I had a discussion, if you recall, early on relative to my understanding of the way the final map came out and the way it was finally printed. I thought there was a discrepancy relative to that. It seems to me we’re looking for geographical descriptions. Are these going to be able to be taken into consideration or not? I don’t know if this question is for you or for the Chairwoman.
Scott Wasserman:
From my perspective, all I brought forth to you was what I was asked to do, which was to look at the changes that were affecting the situation of creating mail-in precincts. Any other considerations in this group of maps and beyond are a decision for your body to make.
Assemblyman McCleary:
Scott, I’ve got a question for you, and I don’t know if this is the appropriate place for this. The next time we redistrict, would it make more sense to use the existing precincts that we have? Then we wouldn’t get in this mess where they have to invent precincts to try to fit everything together. Is that something we could do, or is there something I’m not seeing here?
Scott Wasserman:
There is actually a statute that freezes precincts from the year ending in six. So for the next round, we’re looking at 2006. Precincts are frozen from then until the Legislature is done redistricting. That doesn’t mean that they can’t create new precincts, but if they do, they are supposed to create them within an existing precinct. If the population continues to grow, and they have to create a new precinct, they would make an “A” and a “B.” The problem lies not in the precincts, as I understand it, the time that they’re frozen, the problem is that when you redistrict each one of these bodies separately—like I said, you do the Senate separately, the Assembly separately, the Board of Regents, and the Board of Education—and if you don’t take all those and lay them on top of each other and try to match up districts, you create these little differences that create the need to have a precinct of its own. As Mr. Lomax calls it, it has its own ballot style that all the offices in that particular community is voting on.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Mr. Anderson, could you elaborate for me? I didn’t want to open up the whole issue, but I thought it was safest to land on the number of less than one-tenth of a percent change and under 50 people actually affected. Larry Lomax’s original list looked at registration. When we transposed that, it went into population. Then it got large. It got into hundreds of people, and I didn’t think we had the authority to make those kinds of changes. But if there were some map problems, I don’t know if that’s a legal issue that we could talk about, if that’s something we could assist with.
Assemblyman Anderson:
After the maps came out, I looked at the new maps and noted that the school where I teach, which was in my old district, which I was sure would be in the new district, was not in the district. In fact, it went right in front of the schoolhouse door. I thought that was a little strange, because that had gone on the other side of the football field that the high school would have been in. I thought, “Gee, I wonder how that happened?” Apparently, it was my understanding that that’s the way it was going to happen, so I brought that forward. I know Ms. Steinle knows where that is, because she was my student at that high school. I know that she didn’t do it. Dracula was out there eating up my district, so I was a little surprised.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t remember that one. This Committee, unfortunately, was not much involved in the drawing of that, even though we were supposed to have been.
Does the Committee feel comfortable with considering the maps that have been brought before you with the changes? Think about it. We’ll find a vehicle. Bob [Beers] has been kind enough to say we could use his bill if that’s the case. We’ll wait for Dan Burk to get us his, and as soon as he gets that, then we could actually act on that. We have until next week. Thank you very much.
I’d like to open the hearing on A.B. 487.
Assembly Bill 487: Enlarges membership of Legislative Committee on Public Lands and provides date for expiration of Committee. (BDR 17-1272)
Assemblyman Tom Collins, District 1, Clark County:
[Introduced himself] Having served on the Public Lands Committee, and prior to that, attending a lot of those meetings throughout the state and going through the processes that we do with that, I felt we could better be represented with an unelected general public person on that committee. In fact, two would be nicer, but at least one for some balance the way that committee is chosen. I brought this bill forward through the committee process in the hope that you would pass it. It basically adds one representative from the general public. They cannot be an elected official, and they would not receive state or county pay. The only money that would come out of the appropriation that’s given to that committee each session from Ways and Means is that their traveling and [other expenses] would be paid.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
It’s a seven-member committee now?
Assemblyman Collins:
Yes.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
This would make it an eight-member committee?
Assemblyman Collins:
Yes.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
How long has this committee been statutory? Do you know?
Assemblyman Collins:
I think since 1980. Nearly 20 years.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I tried to get rid of all statutory committees last session and make them start all over again. We do things ad infinitum. We are going to be looking at all statutory committees and putting some kind of sunset on it so we can review whether or not they are working, are effective, the cost impact, and so on. Yours just happens to be the first one we’ve heard, so that’s why you’re the first person I’ve got to ask that question to. Would you object if we put some kind of sunset?
Assemblyman Collins:
I don’t have a problem with that. That’s based on your Committee studies and policies. I would add, Madam Chairwoman, that we spent a lot of our meetings dealing with Nevada issues that you don’t see in Las Vegas or in Reno. These are a lot of rural issues. In fact, a case in our state Supreme Court, one of their actions took up a lot of time in this Committee. You go out to the people. This committee meets in Ely, Elko, Winnemucca, Pioche, and Fallon. It meets all over the state, and it deals with a lot of issues from health to mining to whatever. It covers a broad area, and it’s a very effective committee.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Let me ask you this. I’m just looking at it because it’s going to have a fiscal note. It says, “yes” after impact on state. There’s no fiscal note attached to it. A possibility could be, if nothing else, make it two members, two members, and one member from the general public, and get rid of the elected officer, or some other configuration that might drive your numbers.
Assemblyman Collins:
That local elected official has been a county commissioner, usually from rural Nevada outside of Clark County. I don’t know if reducing the committee would be of benefit, because with three and three there was kind of a balance, a north-rural-south, and a pretty good spread. We’ve had some very good participation from memberships in past years. I’ve participated with that committee before I was on it. A general public person, not an elected official, would have, I think, a better viewpoint, a better perspective. It wouldn’t become so—
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Politicized in some cases, maybe.
Assemblyman Collins:
I’m not sure if it’s that, but I think it would give a broader view to areas outside of just maybe ranching, mining, farming type of things, maybe addressing wildlife or other rural issues than just that. Those of you on Ways and Means, you’ll appropriate the money that that committee gets each session for the two years’ use. They usually have some money left, because not everyone travels to every meeting. Within the same budget, you could probably fit this person.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I’m going to do a spreadsheet with all the statutory committees again, what their costs have been, how many people are on them, and how much they cost the state budget just over the last 20 years or however long they’ve been in place, and whether or not it’s just to meet and meet and meet, or does legislation come out of it. Those are things that we have a responsibility to take a look at every so often. That’s why I’m going to suggest again we take a look at sunsetting some of these. We gave that authority to the commission last year because they said they’d deal with it, and they didn’t act on any but one. Maybe we have to take that matter up, because it became too contentious.
Assemblyman Collins:
This committee does meet on a lot of issues. For example, this time was the stock water issue that they took to the Supreme Court that dealt with water development in the whole state. There is legislation that comes from this committee each session.
Assemblywoman Weber:
I just wanted to find out, Mr. Collins, how often does the committee meet on the average?
Assemblyman Collins:
They meet approximately eight times a year. They go to Washington, D.C., annually. What is unique about that is that when legislators from this committee go back there, the state of Nevada is pretty well received. It has been beneficial with legislation we’ve passed as well as this committee’s attendance in Washington, D.C. It has helped us get in funding areas for federal grants to the state. So it’s been a productive committee. It’s definitely been of benefit.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. A fiscal note was $3,600 each year.
Assemblyman Collins:
That would probably be based on if every member went to every meeting, and then you added that cost.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think with our budget constraints, I’m not worried so much about the $3,600, but I want to look at the efficiency, the effectiveness, and over a 20-year period what have some of these statutory committees cost the state. It’s just a review.
Assemblyman Collins:
You might put in a provision in Ways and Means to have the money returned, and maybe they do anyway, their unspent balance comes back. You would probably want to look at that, too. I think you get a little refund every year, because they don’t spend it all.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you. Are there any further questions? [There were none] Is there anyone else who wishes to testify on A.B. 487?
Janine Hansen, Executive Director, Nevada Committee for Full Statehood:
[Introduced herself] I really don’t have any objection to putting a real live person on this committee that might not be connected to the government. However, I would think it would be far more useful to those of us who are concerned with the land issues in the state of Nevada to abolish this committee. I think that it has become a forum and a tool of the Bureau of Land Management, and that the ordinary concerns of people are not really addressed there. I find this in the legislation that came out from the committee this last session. I attended some of those interim hearings. They are very difficult to get to when you have them in Winnemucca and Pioche, and there’s no video conferencing, which also makes it difficult for people to be able to attend. Not that I object to holding meetings in local communities where people can go, but if you’re trying to follow, it’s very difficult.
The other problem with this is that with the recent decision in the Hage case, I think it has brought forward the issue of the word “public lands.” I didn’t bring that with me today, but in a couple of Supreme Court decisions, the definition of “public lands” is, “land to which no rights or claims attach.” In the state of Nevada, almost the whole state is divided into adjudicated grazing allotments. These are lands to which rights and claims attach, including such things as water rights, grazing rights, access rights, all of these things. These are not technically under the U.S. Supreme Court decisions “public lands.” What we find is that there is a growing dispute because Hage won in his adjudication on these cases. So I brought you all a bumper sticker today (Exhibit F). I don’t have quite enough for everybody, but I’ll fill in the rest that aren’t there. They are our “Bye Bye BLM” bumper stickers, which we are promoting from the committee.
We really feel that this has not served the good of the rancher. If you’ll notice, 50 percent of the cattle industry in Nevada is defunct. We’ve lost 50 percent of it. The sheep industry is almost entirely gone. Mining is severely impacted by federal regulation. It’s almost nonexistent. For instance, in Mineral County they had millions of dollars coming in for mining. Now it’s almost gone. We have the closing down of places like Gabbs because of this. If it was designed to protect our rights for our grazing and our mining and our rural populations, this committee has failed. We think it might be better off to abolish it and start over again where you could have a committee that really represents the true interests of those who are supposed to be represented by this committee. Thank you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. Are there any questions for Ms. Hansen? [There were none.] Your points were well taken. We’ll take those into consideration. Is there anyone else who wishes to testify on A.B. 487? Seeing none, we’ll close the hearing on A.B. 487. We’re going to take the bills out of order. We’ll take up A.B. 529.
Assembly Bill 529: Makes various changes concerning reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. (BDR 24-558)
Dean Heller, Nevada Secretary of State:
[Introduced himself] Earlier today at a HAVA [Help America Vote Act] committee meeting, I introduced Renee Parker as the Chief Deputy State Treasurer. I had just got done reading a bill that had to do with the State Treasury, and that came out. My apologies to her. Rest assured she is doing quite well in the Secretary of State’s office as its Chief Deputy.
Last session, this Legislature approved an interim committee. I don’t know if anyone on this Committee sat on it. It was the Committee on Participatory Democracy. I know that Senator Titus and Senator McGinness sat on that committee. I think Larry Struve heads that up.
They are coming with recommendations to this Legislature to house that particular Committee for Participatory Democracy in the Secretary of State’s Office, which I approve of. One of the other recommendations that are coming forward is that they want a goal here in the state of Nevada of 75 percent of all eligible voters to be registered and 70 percent of them to vote by 2008. That’s a far cry from where we are today. We’ve got to move this thing quite a way.
I have a couple of bills that I have presented to this Legislature that I think will go a long way in that direction. Election Day registration is one of them. A.B. 529 is one of those bills that I believe will take us in that direction. On Friday, there will be a hearing in the Senate committee on the Election Day registration (EDR) bill. I think that’s one step of moving in the right direction. Those states that have EDR have registration and voter participation level of 15 to 20 percent higher than ours. They are doing something right in those states.
I also think that A.B. 529 addresses other needs, not just registration and voting, but also some confidence in the system. I present these bills to you. I come up with the ideas, my requests, I guess, from this committee, and this Legislature, if the committee comes into the Secretary of State’s office, and I have the responsibility to raise their registration level to 75 percent and their participation to 70 percent, please give me the authority to do so. I don’t mind having the responsibility as long as I have the authority to move in that direction. I think A.B. 529 and EDR is a bold step in that direction. If we’re going to make those advances and changes to meet those levels, we’re going to have to make some critical and substantial changes in the way we handle elections in this state. That’s why we come before you to present this legislation.
[Mr. Heller continued] A.B. 529 makes various changes dealing with reporting and campaign contribution expenditure reports. I have read through this bill. I believe it backs up what I’m about to say. I’m not 100 percent sure, but Renee [Parker] does assure me that it does go in that right direction. Some of this, Madam Chairwoman, comes from a bill last session that was presented to this Legislature from Assemblyman Beers. We took some of his ideas, which we thought were good ideas that didn’t quite make it through the session. I still believe today that it’s a good idea.
Let me give you an idea of what we’re trying to achieve here. I’ve got a form here for the Commission on Ethics. Most of you probably filled that form out last month. I hope you did. I hope you filled that form out. Many of you are familiar with the Campaign Contribution and Expense Reports. I hope you filled those out also. If you did not, you’ll be hearing from me.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
You should give them gold stars, and they have to walk around for a period of time with them on their foreheads to prove that they did it. And then those without gold stars stand out.
Dean Heller:
There are some without gold stars, I assure you. As you’re aware, and the members of the Committee are aware, that third report is due at the beginning of the year.
We also have two other reports that you may or may not have filled out in the past. Some of you, I’m sure, have. This is the Disposition of Unspent Campaign Contributions. If you have leftover campaign dollars from your previous campaign, and you do spend some during the previous year, you have to fill out this particular form.
If that’s not enough forms to fill out by the first of the year, you also have to fill out this form. This is in your excess of $10,000. Anytime you raise greater than $10,000 in any preceding year that’s not an election year, you have to fill out this form also. I assure you, and do understand, the confusion that this causes. A tremendous amount of confusion. We receive numerous phone calls from candidates asking, “What do I have to fill out? What does this report mean? What does that report mean?” It does cause a tremendous amount of work in my office as we try to explain to not only those that are running for office, but obviously those who have run for office. For that matter, those that have been in office for many, many years are still calling and asking what some of these forms mean and how to fill them out and what’s old money and what’s new money.
[Mr. Heller, continued] The purpose of this bill in front of you today is to combine all of that. We have worked with the Commission on Ethics. We have discussed these three forms, and we do believe that there is a much better process by which we could report annually so that every elected official knows that you have to do one report at the beginning of every year. Instead of wondering if you have to do four reports, you will know that you have to do one report due January 15 of every year. The reason that we want to move in this direction is that not only is it simpler and easier to understand, and we’ll get more candidates and elected officials to follow the laws that are in place, but also it does catch money that ordinarily would disappear during an election cycle. We had problems with leadership of both sides that raise a tremendous amount of money and do their disposition of unspent showing an ending balance, but then start all over on the new election cycle. You’re talking about tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars that go unreported because, as they’ve said to the press, it doesn’t require it, the statutes doesn’t require it, or it’s too confusing to work in this direction.
We believe that there ought to be one accounting process that takes your ending balance and your beginning balance and continue that through an election cycle on all three reports. If you have a two-year term, then it would be your unspent, your disposition. That report will take your ending balance of your third period and then you would account for your revenues and expenditures. You’d have an ending balance, and that would be the beginning of the next reporting period and the next election cycle. If you’re in for four years or six years, the process would be the same, but we would never lose the dollars in the process.
Without this kind of legislation in place, it does cause some consternation. I think it loses some of the general public’s confidence in the process. We just want to be able to disclose where the money comes from and where it goes on a constant basis using one accounting procedure. This covers the C and E forms [contributions and expenses], the political action committees, the parties, and independent expenditures. We try to capture all those groups. That’s why the bill is as thick as it is, because some sections discuss the revenue side of it. You have to have different sections for the expenditure side. That is what that is trying to capture in this particular bill. It’s just one cycle, one continuous accounting cycle so that we always know where the money is and try to simplify this process so, as I mentioned, instead of wondering if you have four reports, you will know January 15 you have one report due. That may just be your third C and E report at the end of an election cycle. You would have this one report due the next year, although on that C and E cycle, you’d have to make sure that the ethics portion of it was filled out also.
[Mr. Heller, continued] There are a couple of other issues in this particular bill. There are some amendments to it that, when I’m done, Renee will walk you through. One, in particular that I would like to mention and that for some reason was not added to this bill by the drafters, I do not understand why it wasn’t, but we can amend it if you see fit, that is to require the electronic filing of contribution expenditure reports in the Secretary of State’s Office. So instead of sending them in by mail, you would do that electronically. We also requested an amendment that would require contributions of $1,000 or more to be electronically reported at the Secretary of State’s Office within 24 hours of receipt of those dollars. If we could add that amendment to this, I think it would be very helpful.
We have the system in place, and I’d be more than happy to bring this in front of the Committee, the system that we had in place during the last election cycle where you could electronically file your reports. That system is in place now, in fact, to do what this amendment asks for. That particular system is up and working. It’s just a matter of getting the necessary legislation, enabling legislation in order to go forward in that direction.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
We’ve got a couple of questions. Have you seen the Ethics Commission amendments as well?
Dean Heller:
Yes, we have.
Assemblyman Conklin:
Mr. Heller, I’m a newly elected Assemblyman. I know you were here at one time. The only thing I don’t know is if when you were a newly elected person, if we had the same reporting as there is now. I can tell you that I support freedom of information, to get the information flowing. I certainly, as a candidate and elected official, have nothing to hide. But I do have some concerns from the standpoint of having to report something within 24 hours, having to report something 7 days before a primary, and 7 days before a general election for the mere fact that 7 days before the election I had zero time. I was busy walking from door to door trying to meet as many people as I could, balancing my job, my home life. The concern here, at least from my perspective, is making it a procedure that’s easy to follow, that’s accurate. We want integrity-bound reporting, but from a candidate’s perspective, and particularly the new folks, because I’m sure it’s going to get easier time after time to make sure that it’s not overly complicated. I’m just kind of curious why you chose 7 days ahead of time. Why don’t we have just one reporting on January 15 and include all the numbers, all the data? You get all the information from the lobbyists. You could certainly publish a list that shows who gave who what in reverse, as opposed from candidates. If you could elaborate on that, I’d appreciate it.
Dean Heller:
I appreciate the question. Let me assure you, first of all, the answer to the first question is no. We did not have all these reports 12 years ago when I was a freshman here in this building. The greater than $10,000 and the disposition of unspent are more recent reports. They came about due to some statewide races where people had announced years in advance and were raising a tremendous amount of money in off election years, and we wanted to capture that information and make sure that was available to the public. In answer to your first question, we did not have all these reports back then. To assure you, as a statewide candidate, not just in an Assembly race, having run a statewide race, I was able to find time with the contributions that I was able to receive and to be able to report that to my system, to the electronic filing system, within 24 hours, within 7 days, whatever the case may be, into it. It just didn’t show on the system. In other words, it could have if I’d chosen to. Although I didn’t raise a lot of money for a statewide race, I think it was probably pretty reasonable to what you would receive in an Assembly race, anyway. But that information I reported as a statewide candidate and didn’t find a lot of difficulty in doing it.
I think the key is familiarity with the system, to go in there, log on, put the information in, and walk out. You could probably do that within five minutes if you had five minutes in your day in order to do that. If these numbers, if these times, are too small, I’m open for suggestions that maybe $1,000 is not enough. Maybe $10,000, maybe $5,000. What I’m trying to do is present to you a package. If within 24 hours is too small of a window and you think five days would be better, again, we can agree on a compromise on this. I just wanted to put the policy in front of you and see what yourself, Mr. Conklin, or the Committee could live with. Because again, on some of the issues I shared with you in previous hearings, some of these letters that I get of people, not only sitting legislators, but those in other parties that find it necessary not to fill out all of these reports at all, or late, whatever the case may be.
[Mr. Heller, continued] Just to give you an example, we have roughly 1,200 candidates during every election cycle. We get about 200 each reporting period that either file late or don’t file at all. You can imagine the amount of work. Not only would this assist in the general public’s knowledge and knowing and the freedom of information, but also would tremendously reduce the amount of workload in our office and get this information out to the general public. As I had mentioned in a previous hearing, this is a sitting legislator that decided it wasn’t important to fill out the form (Exhibit G). And we have other minor parties that feel that it’s not necessary to fill out these forms at all (Exhibit H).
I’d certainly be more than happy to address why they don’t feel it’s important to move forward on this. That kind of information does not get out to the general public. If you had to file this information on a steady basis, the public would have more information, but they’d also probably understand the character of some of these parties and the candidates in a much more earlier mode so that they can make the necessary decisions when they walk into the voting booth. I do believe it’s critical information. I think it’s information that the general public could really sink its teeth into and that would raise the confidence of the process that we have.
Assemblyman Conklin:
I think there’s a common feeling, if I’m hearing Mr. Heller correctly, that if the voting public needs to know where the funds come for purposes of actually casting their ballot, then I think the public opinion of elected officials is very poor. What it does is it sends the message that every elected official is paid for. That’s what I’m hearing, and that’s not the case.
Dean Heller:
I would respectfully disagree with that. I’ll make the comment, I’ve made it before, but there is no better way of understanding how a person in an elected capacity, how their tendency to vote would be. No better way of knowing that than other than looking at their campaign contributions. And I’m not saying campaign contributions are good or bad where they’re coming from. All I can say is you can look at someone’s contributions and have a pretty good idea of what line they’re going to go down once they do serve in whatever body or committee it may be.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I would say the voting record would tell you even more.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I totally disagree with that concept. I do not think that the voting public is going to, first of all, look it up to find out. I would hope that is not their attitude, because that’s just not true. How can you say somebody’s going to vote one way because they got a campaign contribution from a real estate company?
Dean Heller:
I didn’t say that. I said the tendency of how they would vote.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I don’t agree with that.
Dean Heller:
If you’re getting any campaign contributions from unions, if you’re getting them from conservative bodies, I mean, nine out of ten people walking down the street would tell you today that they could tell how a person is going to vote based on their campaign contributions. I think that’s a pretty valid fact.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I disagree with that, but I think the public has a very low opinion of elected officials anyhow.
Dean Heller:
And we’re here to change that.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I have a couple questions. First of all, if you have to electronically file the big chunks of money—you’re assuming we get big chunks of money—how would you know if it was within 24 hours that we received it? What kind of backup do you have on that? And then, I tend to agree with Assemblyman Conklin. Why in the world do we have to file a report a week before an election so that the general public, who really doesn’t care who gave you money, can determine whether or not to vote for you?
Dean Heller:
First of all, if you look at the first section of this bill, it gives the Secretary of State’s Office audit authority. We’ll be able to tell very quickly when these C and E reports come in whether or not they’re accurately reporting when these campaign contributions do come in. With that kind of authority, it would be very easy to tell.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Excuse me, but how would you know?
Dean Heller:
First of all, if you didn’t report at all, I think we would know that.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Let’s just take an example. I get a $1,000 check. I put it in the computer on April 7. How do you know that thing didn’t sit on my desk for a week before that?
Dean Heller:
We have a C and E report, three C and E reports to begin with. The three C and E reports tell you you’ve got to put a date down on those. Whether you make it exactly within 24 hours—
Assemblywoman McClain:
What’s to stop me from putting down the date I entered it instead of the date it came in the mail?
Dean Heller:
Answer my questions: Are your C and E reports not accurate? You’ve got to do that now.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
You have to by law. For those who have not been here before—Kathy, let me just reiterate this. We dealt with this three sessions ago. You have to report this, once it is received in your hands, within a week. We did discuss that we have no idea whether or not you actually get that, and we can’t prove it. We have lobbyists that sit on checks sometimes; some of you may have seen them that are three and four months old. That’s why we set the point of time that you actually receive it. But truthfully, you can’t track that part of it. I think that’s the frustration. I don’t think anybody misrepresents that, Dean. It’s our word against anybody else’s.
Dean Heller:
We have fined candidates for contributions they have received in one period, and waited until the next reporting period in order to report that. We’ve had several candidates that we’ve fined a substantial amount of dollars for each violation of that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Publish their names in the paper and give them up. Ashes on their forehead.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Just a follow-up with that thought. There are times when you get stacks of them, too. They’re not stacks. I wish. There are times when you have more arrive at the same time. I guess my whole frustration with this is forcing me to get on that “blankety-blank” computer and have to do something every day. I think that’s part of my frustration. Especially if there’s really no way of proving whether I did it or didn’t do it.
Dean Heller:
Going back, I think there’s some frustration over some of this testimony. Keep in mind that candidates do return checks. Because of the implications of it, I do know that Ensign or Porter or some of these candidates have returned money that they received from advocates of Yucca Mountain. It’s very clear out there, and the general public understands that there are certain contributions that you simply do not want, you don’t want shown on your report, for obvious reasons. It does have some implications. When you receive campaign contributions, where your expenditures go does make a difference in some voters. Clearly, that’s why it receives such journalistic, magnifying glass type of information out there just before Election Day.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Maybe a better way to go, Dean, is to go—and this would be cumbersome as well—is we only require PACs and groups that are organized to have to actually report whom they gave the money to, and then hopefully that matches up with what we put down.
Dean Heller:
That’s generally where we get the complaints.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
The problem is you’ve got a lot of people that are in parts of PACs that write checks. You don’t know who actually gave how much, and who reported how much. I don’t think you can go to every citizen that writes a check to somebody and say, “You have to file a campaign report.” That’s the other side of it, where if you want a cross match, that might be the cleanest way to do it. I don’t think you can get that.
Dean Heller:
We have taken steps to strengthen that, especially when it comes to the parties and their reporting where their contributions are coming, if they’re making contributions to candidates. We get numerous conversations from executive directors of the parties and state party heads as to how they deal with some of their reporting mechanisms, and they do report to our office.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
There are a lot of groups that aren’t.
Dean Heller:
If they don’t file, it’s hard to follow. Unless they’ve made an obvious mistake, it’s very difficult for us to track.
Assemblyman Beers:
The thought popped into my head that we can correlate the records of the donors with the records of the recipients, which is where the Chair was just going, pointing out that we have individual citizens who write us checks. In fact, not infrequently. They don’t report to you their expenditures. You have that missing piece of information. A particular company or group can write a check today and it might take seven days to get to the individual who’s designated to deliver that check to that candidate at a meeting scheduled for another week away. The meeting gets cancelled and it’s another week away. Three weeks after the check is actually cut, which is going to be the date of the check reported to you, it’s given to the candidate.
Dean Heller:
I don’t believe that’s how it’s written. I think it’s upon receipt of the check. I think that is how the statutes are written.
Assemblyman Beers:
From the candidate.
Dean Heller:
Yes.
Assemblyman Beers:
Right. But there can be a lag time between. Do you mean the contributor reports to you the date that the check is received?
Dean Heller:
As a candidate, you would report the day that you received the check.
Assemblyman Beers:
But as a contributor, you report the day that you cut the check.
Dean Heller:
True.
Assemblyman Beers:
There’s going to be an indeterminate number of days there that I think prevents you from using any kind of a cross-reference technique to be able to pin down the timing issues on the reporting.
Dean Heller:
Just so you know, usually a contributor would complain to our office that it didn’t show up on a reporting period. That would be the only way we would find out if a particular candidate received a contribution. That has occurred.
Assemblyman Beers:
Regarding the E-file—not to sound like a broken record, but we’ve been down this road before—I spent a piece of my weekend this last weekend dealing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). I used Turbo Tax and cranked out my taxes. I was able to hit a button, and the work I had done already on the computer was electronically transmitted to the IRS. Let me take that process and correlate it to what you’re looking at doing here.
I have developed software that I use to record on a daily basis the accounting activity of my campaign and a few others, as well. The output of that, if I hit a button right now, is my data on your form that I’ve recreated in my reporting system. In order to comply with what you are proposing, I would then have to turn around and retype every one of those transactions into an interface that’s really not designed for large quantities of data entry, which is a web HTML form. As interfaces go, it’s not the ideal interface to get a lot of data into a computer quickly.
If we go down this path, I believe we need to come up with a data file format that you and the rest of the world agree is our common method of interchange. It’s relatively easy for me to take that data out of my system and put it in virtually any format that you want, as long as you have a system built to expect it in the agreed upon format, which is how Turbo Tax essentially works. In order to E-file, I don’t print it out, put it in my Turbo Tax, and type it back in on a Web interface. I think we need to get around that problem before we can say we’ve got the E-filing thing in place and ready to go.
Finally, I think in Ways and Means we’ve had this discussion about the value that citizens place on our financial information. You told a story that I didn’t hear this afternoon about the relative volume on your Web site and how there are big spikes when new reports go up. Would you discuss that for the benefit of the rest of the Committee? You can even do it in general terms.
Dean Heller:
We certainly don’t have a copy of that information that we did provide. Assemblyman Beers is referring to a graph that we have in our office that talks about the relative activity within our Elections Division during the reporting period cycles. For those of you who don’t believe that there is interest in Contribution and Expense Reports, I assure you, just take a look at the volume of people, of the hits we get on our Web site, just during every reporting cycle. During that week we jump substantially, probably 100 or 150 times our average hits for that elections division pertaining to that information. I assure you, and I appreciate you reminding me of that, that the activity is very high when those reports do come in.
Those who are aware that that information is available on our Web site, that information is readily available. I assure you that many members of the media are very interested in getting hold of this information. We do provide it. When these reports come into our office, we put that information on our Web site within 24 hours. Every candidate that reports in our office is there.
Again, this bill would take all the candidates, all 1,200 candidates, and bring them into the Secretary of State’s office instead of reporting to their counties. I believe that the anticipation of that, in the view that the public would have, would be substantially increased if all reports come to our office. One of the reasons we want these reports coming to our office, as opposed to the current filing office, is the filing office they currently have then has to report to the Secretary of State’s Office. By the time we find who’s late or who hasn’t filed, the fines are pretty substantial, sometimes in the range of $1,000 to $1,200 before we even find out that they’re late or they haven’t filed their reports. If we can get them into our office, we can get those turned around much quicker.
We get a lot of concerns and a lot of complaints of people who claim that they didn’t realize that they had to file a report on their first reporting period. We usually get a couple hundred the first, and cut that in half about the second time, then maybe half again on the third reporting period. We would like to reduce that window by the amount of time that we receive these reports. Errors are made. Sometimes we find that all three of the reporting periods are done in the first period because they don’t anticipate contributions. Or expense reports, they’ll staple together, they’ll throw it in their file then they’ll report to us that they haven’t filed their second or third report. So we send out a nasty letter. They’ll respond, “Oh, I filed my second and third.” We ask the filing officer to take a look at their records, they’ll look, and sure enough they had stapled the second and third report on it and just missed it. This would make life a lot easier in our office. I think it would be easier for candidates, in that we could reduce the amount of fines. Even some of our cleanup asks for some changes in the amount of fines that we do ask. We’ve asked before for those who perhaps received no contributions or expense, but some of those issues I think are important for us to address here.
[Mr. Heller, continued] But anyway, the activities, again, from Assemblyman Beers and his response is yes, we do have a tremendous amount of interests in these reports, C and E reports; and the general public, in my opinion, cares.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I would bet if you surveyed, it’s consultants, like my husband, who run political campaigns. It’s our opponents. It’s us. It’s first-time candidates that want to see, “Oh, they wrote them a check. I’m writing them.” It’s current candidates that say, “That son of a gun gave who a check?”
Dean Heller:
And the media.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
The media. Groups like PLAN (Progressive League Alliance of Nevada) that monitor and some of those groups that do the analysis of who contributed to what. I wish we could segregate the general public from those who are into politics versus the other group. I would imagine that would cause a spike, and then once you get that information, you’re out calling, writing checks, or making phone calls and writing letters.
Dean Heller:
Clearly it serves the process, even if those who you are looking at or discussing were to use this information. It’s still serving the process.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think having the information available is very helpful.
Assemblyman McCleary:
Mr. Heller, we’re citizen legislators up here, as you well know. We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get here. What a bureaucracy. I haven’t gone through so much bureaucracy since I was in the army. I won’t be here forever. Someone’s got to take my place eventually. I’m not going to do anything to make it any harder for someone to serve. We need citizen legislators. That was just a statement. I just wanted to point that out to you.
There are a lot of things I disagree with on this bill. When you made your presentation here, I think I made some of those points, so I’m not going to repeat those. I want to ask you something. I think the last legislative session they passed a bill saying you no longer had to itemize $100 or less, or put it in, just give a grand total of what it was, yet the reports don’t reflect that. Could you explain to us why?
Dean Heller:
Why they did ask for the itemization of the $100 or less?
Assemblyman McCleary:
No. My understanding is the last legislative session they told you that you no longer had to put the date, the amount, what it was for, but you would just put the total at the end.
Dean Heller:
We provided that information for those who did want to provide that information on the reports. Is that what you’re saying?
Assemblyman McCleary:
Right. I didn’t know that until I got here. I sat there and went through all that itemization, and then someone told me when I got here I didn’t have to do that.
Dean Heller:
We provided that information to those who wanted to provide that information. There are those that feel very strongly that they will report everything. As a convenience for those who believe that they ought to report 100 percent of where their contributions come from, those reports were there. I do believe it said on the report that those were optional, that that report was optional.
Assemblyman McCleary:
I’ll have to look at that, because I don’t remember that. I just thought it was one more hoop I wish I didn’t have to jump through. Thank you.
Assemblyman Grady:
I think I share the same frustration that Assemblyman Conklin expressed earlier. My first thought was, “It’s a full employment application for CPAs.” I think Mr. McCleary just came across some of the questions I was going to ask. It seems to me that on the reports that you send out, we found out after we got here that we didn’t have to fill those out. My main question is, after we send these in, 7 days when we’re very busy campaigning and everything else, and it’s a good 10 days after that before the Secretary of State’s office gets the completed files up on the system, who is it really helping?
Dean Heller:
That’s not correct. Any report that’s filed in our office gets up on our Web site within 24 hours. The first reporting period, if it’s 10 days before and it gets in to us 9 or 8 days before, within 24 hours that information is on the Web site for that candidate that’s filed in our office.
Assemblyman Grady:
I really would have to question that, because some of them, I don’t think they were.
Dean Heller:
You’re a multi-county district, so you would file with our office, and you could probably tell whether your report was up there within 24 hours.
Assemblyman Grady:
It was not.
Dean Heller:
I would strongly disagree, because believe me, there’s an emphasis in our office that those reports are available. If there is any position that I have taken in this office, it’s public information, public’s right to know this information is available immediately. I apologize if I’ve misspoken here, that your report in particular wasn’t up there, but I assure you that 99.9 percent of those reports were up within 24 hours.
Assemblyman Anderson:
Mr. Heller, I can hardly believe how this has gotten out of hand in terms of where it’s going and what the original intent was supposed to be. Quite frankly, I have never disagreed with the idea if you want to take a look at where I got my last dime, my first dime, to who gave my biggest contribution. I’ve always said that the biggest contribution I received was a $50 money order, first time I ran, from a teacher who didn’t have enough money to have a banking account.
Dean Heller:
I remember you telling me that story. The question I had in my mind was, did that impact your way of voting, since you continue to share that story with us?
Assemblyman Anderson:
It is, because it shows a very important point. If you believe that the candidates are ruled by the money they receive, which is what you continue to avow here, that that’s going to be the predictability of the voting.
Dean Heller:
The best predictability, yes.
Assemblyman Anderson:
If that is what you truly believe, then there’s no reason for you even to bother to stop to listen to us, because you’re not concerned about that. All you want to know is that, and that fact alone. It has nothing to do with what the people say. It has no trust into the belief of what political candidates say to the public, or how they work the public, and how they make statements. Then do you believe that it is only on how we spend our dollars? If that were the case, why do you not list all the events that we support in addition? You only want us to broadly place dollars in our reporting element, but you want specific statements of where we gained our money. I find that very contradictory in the way we fill out the forms.
You don’t say, “I put up a $500 flag pole and bought flags for every school in my district.” You don’t care about that. You could care less. I don’t make a big thing about it anywhere else. I just think that it’s absolutely ridiculous the way you’re going about doing this.
You’re trying to take power, because you want them to report to you, the Secretary of State, under the guise that the local folks don’t give you the information as quickly as you would like. I don’t feel that there’s any reason not to put it into the local filing district. There’s no reason to do that. Why would I not want to have a relationship with the voting district office with the voter registrar where I’m at? Why should I not trust that office to be competent enough to get information to you? Because that’s exactly what you’re saying here with this. I find it very offensive. Very offensive. As a candidate I find it offensive, I find it offensive to the voter registrar offices who I think are doing a really bang-up job of trying to get the information available to the public and to your office. That’s number one.
Number two; I think Mr. McCleary had the point. This time, because of all the additional minutiae, I had to go out for the first time and hire an accountant to do this for me because I didn’t have the time to fill out all the little forms on the proper computer system that you and everybody else seems to want to do.
Number three, the belief that we have a bank that’s going to be open at 7:00 p.m. is not possible. My day starts at 7:00 a.m. and it goes until 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. five days a week. When I finish my school day, I immediately begin to campaign. When I open my mail at 7:00 p.m., there’s not going to be a bank open. I have to find a convenient time to do my banking. I’m not somebody that has access. I would venture to say that many of the people in the rural areas of the state do not have access to banks within four or five miles of them. I think some of your levels of expectations are just not practical for the average citizen who might like to run for public office. I think if we’re talking about a participatory democracy, participatory democracy means one where all the people have an opportunity to participate. It’s not just some fancy slogan you use. I find it very, very offensive that both the information that I hear here and the way you represent it and the slander that I think you’re placing on the candidates who do a very, very good job.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I think if people want to factor in who gave me contributions, that’s fine. If this is really designed to get that information to the voters, then the filing date should be before early voting starts, which is not 7 days. It should be somewhere before early voting. As Mr. McCleary was talking about jumping through hoops, I think that what you’re doing here would require that once you file to be a candidate, you go get a computer and you learn how to work it and you learn how to file things. I think that day may come when we can simply assume that everybody has a computer, knows how to use one, finds it easy to use them, wants to. That day will come, but it’s not here yet. I think that is anti-democracy.
Dean Heller:
Technology is? I just want to make sure what’s anti-democracy.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
The part about requiring people to electronically file.
Dean Heller:
The FEC [Federal Election Commission] requires it now.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I wasn’t aware of that.
Dean Heller:
I’ve heard that argument before.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I don’t think they should be requiring it either. As far as what Mr. Anderson was saying, during the campaign, I open my mail once a week. I sit down on a Friday night and open a week’s worth of mail. I didn’t open it every day. I’m confused about what exactly is accomplished by notifying your office within 24 hours that we’ve received a check. I’m confused about who that helps.
Dean Heller:
Let me assure you that we’re not requesting anything that the FEC doesn’t already require for congressional candidates. There are a lot of congressional candidates who would claim that the volume and the rhetoric within their candidacy and the amount of work they have to do far exceeds the work and effort of an Assembly candidate in any state. We’re not building some new bridge here, or some new building. Let me assure you that this isn’t coming out of left field, the FEC report. In fact, we changed our third report during the election because of the complaints to specifically match the FEC reports, so we’re going down that route.
I assure you I’m not surprised by some of the comments that I’ve been hearing here today. My goal in this process is speed and accuracy to the general public and the public’s right to know. With speed and accuracy does come some technology, and it will require technology in order to get that speed and that accuracy to be there. I don’t even think the clerks and registrars have an issue of these reports coming directly to my office, at least they haven’t explained that or served that concern to me. What we’re looking for is speed and accuracy, and accuracy is the key here so the general public has its knowledge. I assure you the media does care as much as the public cares, and that’s why this information is out there. If nobody cared, the press would not print up any of this. There’s no doubt that there is interest out there, and we are assisting. My job as Secretary of State is to assist the general public in understanding this information and have as much information at their fingertips as possible. That’s why we have headed down in this direction. I hope that helps answer your question.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I’m confused about why speed is so important. I realize that is sort of the style of the times.
Dean Heller:
I will tell you. You raise a question about early voting, that these reports should come before early voting. Well, there would be an argument that because we have early voting for two weeks, if someone were to report that much earlier, how much money would they then raise in the two-week window before that election? That was the argument as to why it is where it is today. Why the first reporting period, the date for the reporting period, is because they didn’t want too big of a window between the reporting period and that election. If a ton of money came in, it would go unreported, and it could actually, in that two-week period, put someone over the top. They squeezed that window down, so that’s what’s requiring the speed. Frankly, we want to add to that accuracy.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I understand what you’re saying about that. Yes, it does accomplish what you’re saying in terms of between the time you file and the election. You won’t get a huge amount of money that will accomplish anything. On the other hand, the people who early vote don’t get the benefit of seeing who has contributed to your campaign. It’s pretty much six of one, half dozen of the other. The fact is that some of democracy requires a leap of faith, as many things in life require a leap of faith. I still haven’t heard exactly what is accomplished by the 24-hour turnaround on a check that I’ve received. What does that accomplish?
Dean Heller:
Again, it does provide information. We did give you some information of those candidates that refuse to file any reports (Exhibit H). You would know that, earlier. We also had a couple of complaints during the election cycle. One, in specific, being the Sandoval-Hunt issue that is still pending. That information would have been far earlier, the information or the issue within that particular complaint. Perhaps it could have been resolved during the election cycle itself, or at least, if there are some irregularities, that it doesn’t occur two weeks before a general election. In other words, it’s causing such a small window for reporting that it’s causing all sorts of issues that we’re unable to deal with, like the Hunt-Sandoval issue.
I talked to [Brian] Sandoval about this. He said this is exactly the direction he would have gone if we hadn’t presented this information, because here was a situation where we could have caught this much earlier, we could have monitored it, we could have told the public and the press and whoever was interested in the information. Even opponents or the political class, whoever is interested in this information, would have had it much earlier. That information would have been, I think, systematically used if the general public would have received this information and been able to make a better decision, another decision, a different decision, perhaps, then they made because that information wasn’t available.
What we’re trying to do is to make this information available as early as possible for the general public if there are issues, if there are concerns, if there are problems. What’s going on out there right now with a single reporting period 7 to 10 days before the election itself, this kind of information doesn’t get out in a timely fashion.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Let’s see if we can get back on to the bill. I’ll let you respond after we get back on to the bill, or else we’re never going to get out of here this evening.
I think the issue is this: I think you sense some frustration in the room, but I don’t think it’s a disagreement that we should be filing. I think some of the frustration is more in the mechanics of it, that we want it to be workable. You’re hearing from a lot of everyday citizens. I still do all mine by paper and pencil and drive my husband absolutely crazy when I come in at the last minute and say, “Will you double-check this?” I tried to do the computer, not your program, but I did try to get it there, and then I lost it all. Then I really freaked out. I had to start all over.
[Chairwoman Giunchigliani, continued] It’s just the concept of the change. We may not quite get there yet. I don’t think anybody disagrees that we want to be as accurate as we can, but there’s problems on the other side that no matter how honest we are, and I would believe that everybody in this room is, some stuff you just have to take our word for. Lobbyists don’t give us checks. As Mr. Beers said, they could cut the check, sit on it for three weeks, then give it to us, and then we document rightly when we receive it, but that doesn’t tie back to when they give it. We could actually create more problems if we’re not careful in whatever format we go. I think you’ve got support for simplifying the form, consolidating the form. I’m going to ask a couple of our Committee members to kind of work on that as a sidebar so we can kind of rough it out so we know better this session what we want it to look like so that it works for everybody. Even as you said, out of $100, the only mandatory part is the $100 and over. I have in A.B. 541 that we’ll hear this week to get rid of it completely, but the forms don’t say that it’s optional. People thought they had to put it down, and many did, and that was just extra work because it doesn’t tell you anything.
So we can get back into the framework, other than the issue of the electronic filing.
Dean Heller:
Which would be an amended version of this. Taking the bill as it is now, without the amendment.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Can you briefly describe the purpose for requiring contributions of over $1,000, or whatever number you want it to land on, to be sent to you for the 24-hour period?
Dean Heller:
That’s part of the amendment. Do you want to get into that?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
If you don’t mind, yes.
Dean Heller:
We just figure that you would accumulate, say, over a week’s period, $1,000, then you get on the system and report it. It’s hard for me to say this, because I’m an advocate for this, but having used the system, it’s much easier for me to go along through an election cycle and actually put this information in and save it and walk away from it and come back a week later, two weeks later, the next check, or whatever the case may be, put it into the system and walk away. Historically, most of us probably spend the day or two days before rushing to get all of our information together, trying to figure out if we’ve accumulated and saved everything, finding the right file, so on and so forth. I have found it to be a much easier process for me, accounting-wise, just to have this data in there. All you’re doing is you’re opening up the system, putting in the name, the amount, and the address.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think we had a couple Committee members that tried it and ran into some problems. Somebody, I remember, tried to use it and then it didn’t send it. Then they had some concerns on that.
Assemblyman Beers:
Is there a button, and forgive my ignorance, is there a button I can push that tells me how much I have in the bank today?
Dean Heller:
In that system? It would give you your totals and your expenditures. So if you could subtract your totals, contributions—
Assemblyman Beers:
Does it handle beginning balances any better than the form itself?
Dean Heller:
Yes, it does. It does handle the beginning balances and the ending balances, and it will present that form to you. Obviously, you don’t want to send it until the end of the report period itself. That report form, after you’ve input the data, will accumulate. It will do the math for you. It will put it in, type all the information in for you into the necessary blanks, and that report will be available to you. You could print it out first and take a look at it. If you’re comfortable with it, then you just electronically send it.
Assemblyman Beers:
Are there fields in there for a budget so I can see my progression toward my budget and figure for direct mail?
Dean Heller:
There is none currently.
Assemblyman Conklin:
Mr. Heller, unfortunately I didn’t use the electronic ones, and I wish I had, because I have unfortunately had to amend my reports, because I made a mathematical error. It was all on the paper, but it gets late at night when you finish the form, and you’re trying to meet the deadlines and so on and so forth. I appreciate the electronic piece.
Dean Heller:
I did the same thing, by the way.
Assemblyman Conklin:
On the 24-hour reporting, is it your intention that that will be live for Web site viewers, or do you just want the reporting so that you can match, sort of as we go along, instead of having this big push of things?
Dean Heller:
No, it would be live. It would be on the Internet. Anybody that wanted to go in under Assemblyman Conklin’s name would be able to see, to date, the campaign contributions of $2,000.
Assemblyman Conklin:
Do you think that, just forget where they come from and what that means, but just for political strategy purposes as a campaign, it’s going to be impossible for you to tell 24 hours? What about those of us who are honest, assuming everybody here is, what about the candidate who isn’t? I’m putting out information about me every 24 hours, and there’s some other candidate that’s holding everything, and they dump everything on the last day, or in clumps 2 or 3 days ahead of time. Now the voters have a lot of information on me, which I’m more than happy to give if it’s in comparison to the next candidate. Do you see what I’m saying? I’d have no problem putting it in every 24 hours or as fast as I can get to it provided everyone else did the same. If they’re not, I’d put it in if it were closed, and you’d publish it on a certain date with all the information. At least everybody is on the same playing field.
Dean Heller:
The first thing that would happen is you’d call my office and say, “You know, I’ve been working on this system, and I have been submitting at least once a week, weekly, when I get the accumulation of $1,000, putting this information in, and I notice my opponent is not. Would you take a look at his report and tell me how he can raise $30,000 in the primary and not show a single report earlier than the filing day itself?” Then we’d open an investigation. That’s how that would work.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think I got it. On your amendment, you said “accumulation of $1,000,” which is different than what’s on the amendment.
Dean Heller:
It would be an accumulation of $1,000.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Accumulation of $1,000 within a 24-hour period.
Dean Heller:
No. Any time you’d receive an accumulation within 24 hours, then you would have 24 hours to report that accumulation.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Tell me again in 10 words or less the purpose.
Dean Heller:
Speed and accuracy, public’s right to know.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Public’s right to know what?
Dean Heller:
Where campaign contributions are coming from.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They can see it now. I just don’t see what $1,000, how you get there. You’re going to actually create more inaccuracies, is my fear. I think whatever we do, we don’t even have people currently that file what you require. Correct?
Dean Heller:
That is correct. I think we have some examples of that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Is there anything in here that we could use to get people that currently are not even bothering to disclose to disclose?
Dean Heller:
I think the courts will handle that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They haven’t yet. We had this in a hearing in February. Some states say if you don’t do your paperwork, you don’t get to run for office again the next time around. I mean, is there any language that you’re suggesting that makes sense to fix at least what we know is a problem right now?
Dean Heller:
On April 11th, we are submitting to the Attorney General’s Office, who will submit it to the District Court, all those in this election cycle who did not report or reported late and refused to pay the fines. Although we did have some problems with the previous election cycle that was aired in the papers of missing some statutes of limitations, we won’t miss them this time. We’ve been assured by the Attorney General’s Office that he’s going to do everything he can to fully prosecute those who refuse to file these. I’d like to see that process work first.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Finally, on the bill and the amendments, I see several different components. Let me see if I can restate them, because now we need to move on. We have an audit feature that you wish to add, and you’ve raised that each session. Do you know what the fiscal note is on that, or will we have that when and if this goes over to Ways and Means?
Dean Heller:
We didn’t prepare a fiscal note on this. In fact, I’d like to run an election cycle first to see what the impact is before we add a fiscal note to it.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
It would also allow you to investigate incomplete or untrue information, yet I don’t see any definitions of either of those areas, so if we choose to process this we might need to land on some kind of discussion there.
I see in your amendment you’re asking to strike [NRS] 294A.125 throughout Section 3; you’re adding language to make sure wherever it states, “and every elected official who is not a candidate.” So you’re capturing those who are on the off season, I guess is what you’re trying to do there; that we consolidate the forms into one simplified form; that we would transmit directly to your office and no longer to the local governments. Does that cover the gist of what’s contained in there if I’ve got my notes right? Did I miss anything?
Dean Heller:
That’s correct.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Are there any final questions directly on those matters that I just stated?
Assemblyman Anderson:
I’m not sure it’s on the amendment, but it deals with the concept of incomplete. It kind of does it in the original bill. Would you consider a filing form that is incomplete thus not filed if it for some reason in doing the computation, they left out a number that made sense so that when you looked at the form, either there was an addition error or some of those common kind of things that seem to happen when people who will go from the work form to the final draft or from a draft copy to the final form. Would you consider that, then, to be an incomplete form?
Dean Heller:
We would consider there was an incomplete form today if someone were to report to us in writing and say, “This report doesn’t make sense.” We’d probably go back to you and ask you if this is a complete form, and if it was not, we would ask you to send us an amended version. We would do that today, and probably ask you to do that under this bill, also.
Assemblyman Anderson:
If it’s an incomplete form, according to this new form, the statement “must not be considered to be filed with the Secretary of State,” and would be out of compliance with the law.
Dean Heller:
If it was incomplete? [Mr. Anderson answered in the affirmative.] We would ask you, if you had filed a report in our office, and it looks like an arithmetic error, all we would ask you to do is to come back and just file an amended version. If it didn’t change totals, if it didn’t change the disclosure requirements in our current law or under these laws, then there would be no penalty assessed.
Assemblyman Anderson:
So currently it’s considered to be filed, but not filed accurately.
Dean Heller:
Correct.
Assemblyman Anderson:
With the new bill, it would then go from being not filed—it would go from being—
Dean Heller:
Well, if it didn’t meet the statutory requirements, like if you left out significant data like contributions or expenditures, then it would be an incomplete file and we would consider them filed. If you didn’t sign it, it would be considered an incomplete filing or a non-filing. We want that signature on that. But we do it that way now.
Assemblyman Anderson:
Are you going to start labeling the forms as those that are required by law as compared to those that you’ve elected to put into the packet that you send us? Like the $100 thing, for example, that was not a requirement that you decided to put in after we said no.
Dean Heller:
Would we disclose that it’s optional?
Assemblyman Anderson:
Would you disclose that? Is that what you’re planning on doing? I’m trying to figure out what you’ve decided to do on your own as compared to what we mandated by law.
Dean Heller:
It would not be incomplete.
Assemblyman Anderson:
No. You missed the question.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Did you find any incomplete this time around? Did anybody choose not to do the $100 that you know of off hand?
Dean Heller:
Certainly.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Okay. Did you consider those completed?
Dean Heller:
Yes, we did.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think what Mr. Anderson’s trying to get to is, depending on what the outcome was of the new form, if you modeled some things after FEC, that doesn’t affect us. Would you indicate that on the form? This is voluntary, this is optional, or whatever, so that they would not get caught up in the issue of incomplete.
Dean Heller:
A point well made.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Do you have anything else? [Mr. Heller indicated he did not.] Thank you very much. We’ll take your amendment. Stacy, can you briefly talk about your amendment?
Stacy Jennings, Executive Director, Nevada Commission on Ethics:
[Introduced herself] First of all, I’d like to commend all of the members of the Assembly for timely filing their Financial Disclosure Statements, all 42. Good job.
I rise today in support of Secretary of State Heller’s bill, at least as far asSections 19 through 25 on pages 31 to 36 of the bill (Exhibit I). The Financial Disclosure Statement, filing of those with our office, has been an issue that has caused us an inordinate amount of work over the last year since I started. Seven of our nine regular meetings were dealing with people who filed, people who filed late, people that didn’t file, people who owed civil penalties, people who had requested a waiver or reduction of civil penalties. It really detracts from the work that we’re supposed to be doing, processing complaints against public officers and providing guidance to them in the form of First Party Opinion Requests.
There’s a great deal of confusion in filing deadlines occur. We get a lot of the Campaign Contribution Expenditure Reports, which we date-stamp and then forward to the Secretary of State’s Office. When our filing deadline occurs on March 31, or for candidates, a lot of those forms in turn go to the Secretary of State’s Office. There’s a lot of confusion among both public officers and candidates as to where those go.
We believe that this bill would help eliminate some of that by having the Commission on Ethics retain the responsibility for collecting the appointed public forms and shifting the elected public officers and the candidates over to the Secretary of State’s Office. We would also be working with them to report those appointed public officers who did not file, and they could pursue enforcement against them. It would transfer the great bulk of our work right now, which is trying to chase down the people who didn’t file or filed late, and shift that workload into the Secretary of State’s Office, which would be helpful to us since we only have three people on our staff.
[Ms. Jennings, continued] Currently, we have 1,800 public officers in the state. Approximately 500 of those, I believe, have not filed as of March 31. We have enough to deal with with our appointed public officers, which are the majority of those that have not filed as of this time. In an election year, we have 3,000 of these to process. It is a lot of work.
I did review the Secretary of State’s amendment to the bill. The only thing that we suggested in addition to that was something that the Chairwoman and Assemblyman Anderson brought up, which is, what is “incomplete”? We’re going to court over that issue on April 15. What is substantial compliance? Can we tell someone they didn’t fill out the form if they happen to put, “I plead the Fifth” on every line and refuse to sign? That’s an issue we’re going to rely on the courts to tell us, but we would like something in the law to clarify, perhaps, what an incomplete form is.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Can you briefly talk about your fifth part, which says, “The Secretary of State language based on current statutes has no provisions for failure to file, or only failure to timely file”?
Stacy Jennings:
That’s something that is in our existing statutes in NRS 281.581. We are to pursue people who fail to file a Financial Disclosure Statement, but the statute doesn’t say, “fail to file in a timely manner.” The statute doesn’t say what we do if they fail to file at all. One of things that is in our agency bill, which is S.B. 147, should you choose not to transfer this program over in S.B. 147, we have some ideas of how we’d like to see it changed as far as the fine structure for late fees, which is incredibly crazy, if you’re not going to have it consistent with the Secretary of State and have it filed there. We believe the fine structure is pretty bad. We also believe we should be able to pursue people, declare people a non-filer at a certain point in time and assess them a flat fee rather than letting them essentially go free from someone who is honest and realized they didn’t file and filed late.
If our bill ever makes it out of the Senate, and I’m not confident that it will, we have some changes of our own. We would certainly support giving a ton of this work to the Secretary of State while not removing any positions or money from our own budget. The Commission was very supportive of trying to help the public out. There is a lot of confusion of when this form is due and whom it goes to, and there is a lot of confusion between our offices.
[Ms. Jennings, continued] One other thing that I just wanted to hit on really quick is regarding campaign contributions. There is an issue as far as the timing of those, and I don’t know what you want to do about reporting them or not. There have been allegations in the past that when people make a contribution to a campaign that it’s a pecuniary interest, and that could influence their voting. One of the first cases that I handled when I came on to the Ethics Commission was an allegation that some members of the Clark County School District voted a certain way on naming of schools and building of new schools because the architects and the developers had contributed to their campaigns.
The Legislature did say in our Ethics in Government Law in 1999 specifically that a campaign contribution is not a pecuniary interest if it’s reported in a timely manner as required under the Campaign Contribution Expenditure Report. Unfortunately for us, there’s a huge lag time between when a campaign starts and when that first report is even due. If someone files a complaint with us, how do we know if they were going to appropriately report it properly? If someone is filing a complaint six months after the election is over, we can certainly see whether the vote occurred while that candidate’s last public office, before or after the vote, or what the timing was. As it is right now, if someone is a sitting public officer casting a vote and also happens to be a candidate, and someone drops a $10,000 contribution on them the night before a vote and it’s not due into Dean’s office until two months later, it’s hard for us to be able to do our job. I just wanted to point that out.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Somebody refresh my memory as to why we do the disclosure in January and then again in March.
Stacy Jennings:
It’s not due in January and again in March. It’s just due before March 31, so people can file anytime between January and March 31. If you’re a candidate, the forms were due in our office by May 30. If you were a sitting public officer, and you had filed within 90 days of May 30, you didn’t have to refile as a candidate. You put in a statute that if you have a report on file within 90 days, you don’t have to refile. Some people forget they filed in January and refile in March. It’s just once some time between January 1 and March 31.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Because we haven’t revisited this in a while, would it make sense to do it on a yearly basis and/or upon any changes?
Stacy Jennings:
It’s a policy decision for you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
We just haven’t looked at that in a while, so I’m just talking out loud more than anything else. Are there any questions of Ms. Jennings?
Assemblyman Anderson:
Ms. Jennings, I noticed last year when we began to use the new computerized form as compared to the old form that there are not as many opportunities to make entry for the $5,000 indebtedness. If you fill it out electronically, you have greater options than you do if you’re doing it on paper, because you have to attach another piece of paper to put it on, or you can just squeeze it in, which is what I always do.
Number 1, I’m kind of curious as to why you went to such a narrower form as compared to the older form. I don’t understand why we did that. And number 2, I’m concerned about the people who are on these various commissions and boards who are appointed. Many times they’re on a municipal one, and a county one, and even a state one from time to time. Do those folks have to fill out three separate forms every time they’re coming through all this for you?
Stacy Jennings:
To answer your second question, no they don’t. The form has a spot to put in every public office for which you’re filing this. Let’s say you’re a legislator, but you serve on a couple of other committees. I just tell them to list legislator at the top and then there’s a place there to list the other ones you file it for. Our form is currently required to be filed both at the local filing office, county or city clerk, as well as the commission. In that case, they can fill out the one form, send it to the city, the county, and us, and it would only be copying the form. It wouldn’t be redoing the form numerous times.
As to why there may be fewer lines to report creditors and such, I honestly don’t know. I don’t know how the form might have changed from two years ago to this past year, because I haven’t been there that long. It may have something to do with the fact that when we put it all online, we tried to keep it on one page, so that may have something to do with it. Our form cannot be submitted electronically, anyway. When you type it in online, you still have to print it out. Most people just attach a second page and say, under number 5, “This is my additional information.” That’s fine with us.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. Are there any further questions? Is there anyone that wishes to testify on A.B. 529?
Barbara Reed, Douglas County Clerk-Treasurer:
[Introduced herself] I just have three issues I would like to address. One is regarding page 5, line 6, on the local filing requirement that currently exists for candidates. I do have some concern with this. The news media in rural counties don’t necessarily publish every day. I know in Douglas County we have news media at five o’clock and they’re interested in the commissioners and the district attorneys and those local races. They’re not necessarily interested in the big races. Frequently, we have opponents that are in, and public. Those rural areas, I have some concern that they would feel that the perception was is that we were trying to hide that information, that we were not making it readily accessible for them to review, because we’re now sending everything to the Secretary of State. In Douglas County, I really try and take care of my candidates. We call them the day before the reports are due. We let them know that they need to come in and file them so that they won’t be fined. If you opt to have it go to the Secretary of State’s Office, I would just request that you also have it filed with the local jurisdiction, because they’re running locally. They’re not running statewide.
My second issue involves my many general improvement districts [GID]. I have many boards that are volunteer boards. They don’t receive any compensation. Some of them are very elderly. They don’t have computers. They would be discouraged from filing because they could not do it electronically. Many of them are part-time homeowners. They leave in the wintertime. They’ll say to me, “Barbara, I don’t take any contributions. I don’t make any expenditure. Can I just give you all three reports right now, put zeroes on so I don’t get fined?” I know maybe that isn’t right, but I don’t want them to be fined. They’re volunteers. They don’t receive compensation. They’re not taking contributions. They’re not having any expenditure. I will take all three of their reports. We have a file folder, we put each date in, and I put those GIDs in it. I just think you’re going to see more of those boards where you will not get candidates, and I think you will have them where they’re going to be fined, because they’re not going to get this filed timely.
My third issue is I have a concern with if the site crashes. Election night the last few years we have been working with the Secretary of State’s Office to post our election results as we tabulate them. The site has crashed. We cannot post those election results. If you’re on a deadline and you have many candidates that are trying to get in and file those reports electronically, if it crashes, we have to have some contingency plan for those candidates. They should not be penalized because they cannot get into a site to report it. I think we need to look at the perception. I agree that the information needs to be out there and we make it readily available. The perception, I think, from the general public, particularly in those outlying areas, will be that we are discouraging candidates, or we’re trying to protect candidates, that we’re making it more difficult for candidates. We want to have citizens involved in our process, and to me I think this is very intimidating and puts another huge layer on local candidates that have other jobs, in the cases of commissioners, school board, and general improvement districts. I just have some real concerns about the long-term impact with this. Madam Chairwoman, I hope I was brief enough. Those are my issues, and if you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them. Thank you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani
Thank you very much, Ms. Reed. I appreciate your testimony.
Janine Hansen, President, Nevada Eagle Forum:
[Introduced herself] I am very concerned about this piece of legislation. I think many of you have expressed many of my concerns. I think Mr. Anderson probably put it best when he talked about the fact that we’re trying to encourage people to participate, and yet we are placing so many restraints on them that it becomes impossible to participate.
I would suggest to you that we haven’t gotten one more honest candidate running from all of these reports that you have to file. I don’t think it has made one person honest or one person dishonest. I don’t think it has changed that in the least. I have been opposing these reporting requirements for many years. This is the very reason I have been reporting them. What did we do? We opened a Pandora’s box. We have not resolved anything. It has just made many people much less likely to participate. It has discouraged people, and it hasn’t made the elections more honest in any way, shape, or form.
Anybody voluntarily can publish every single contribution they get if they desire to do so. If you want to make that an issue in your campaign, you can voluntarily do it. Now we are mandating these draconian requirements upon people, and more and more people are less and less willing to participate.
Also, we found that there is a lot of unequal enforcement. For instance, we have a lawsuit right now against the Secretary of State’s Office, because one of our candidate’s reporting wasn’t received until the day after the reporting. It was a $25 fine. There have been hours and hours and thousands of dollars expended on this ridiculous lawsuit, but someone else was just excused from this. We find that this has unequal enforcement, and we’re very concerned about that.
[Ms. Hansen continued] You heard Stacy [Jennings] from the Ethics Commission speak. We’re also in court. That’s us. We’re in court with the Ethics Commission on these particular issues, and it’s very costly to challenge these things. It discourages a lot of people, but we intend to continue to protect our rights.
I want to move to a couple of specifics in the bill, if I may. I don’t have time to object to everything I find objectionable, so I’m just going to hit the highlights of my objections.
On page 2, number 3, it says, “For the purposes of an investigation conducted pursuant to this section, the Secretary of State may take evidence and require the production, by subpoena or otherwise, of books, papers, correspondence, memoranda, agreements, or other documents or records which the Secretary of State determines to be relevant or material to the investigation.” You will notice that when they can request all of your papers and all of these things, you have absolutely no constitutional rights. You don’t have the constitutional right to be protected for search and seizure. You don’t have the guarantee of right to trial by jury. You don’t have due process. None of these are protected in here. You don’t even have a judge. You have the Secretary of State making these determinations. No rights of yours are protected. Why? Because this is not a criminal proceeding. This is a civil penalty which is going to be imposed upon you. However, this has been defined by many courts as a quasi-criminal. We may be crossing the line here in denying people their constitutional rights when we require these things to happen. These rights are definitely violated.
If you will look on line 15 of that same page, it talks about “incomplete or untrue information.” Mr. Anderson brought that up as well. What about a mistake? People can make an honest mistake. What if there’s something else incomplete? You may do this. How are we going to define incomplete? This was an issue that Stacy brought up from the Ethics Commission to define incomplete. We have been objecting to these forms on constitutional grounds, so now because we have a legitimate constitutional argument with which we are going to court, we can be without any rights, we can be found in violation of these, because they have determined that they’re incomplete. In fact, the Ethics Commission, in looking at some of these reports among themselves, could not determine whether we had complied or not. They couldn’t even determine whether it was a complete filing or not. Now we’re going to have one person, with no appeal, in charge of this particular item. It concerns me very, very much.
[Ms. Hansen continued] Over on page 3, line 8, it talks about, “A statement of financial disclosure must not be considered to be filed with the Secretary of State if it is incomplete.” Therefore, even if you have tried to do it and be accurate, for those who choose to subject themselves to these things and don’t think they’re in violation of their constitutional rights, even if you’ve made a mistake, you might be determined not to have filed this because you had something that was incomplete by accident. Therefore, all these things begin to fall into play. It’s very unfortunate.
One of the things we’re concerned about is on page 4. I’m a poor substitute for some of these specifics. My brother, Christopher, has become an expert in these filing things. I’m not, but I’m going to try to relay some of our concerns. On line 21, it talks about, “Each form must be signed by the candidate under penalty of perjury.” What is going to happen to the person if they sign and there’s a mistake? What’s going to happen to someone who refuses to sign? Many of our candidates have asked the Secretary of State many times for answers to our questions. Because the Secretary of State’s Office has never, over an 8‑year period, answered our questions, how can a candidate sign, under penalty of perjury, when they aren’t even sure what these things mean if they’ve asked legitimate questions? They have to file under penalty of perjury when the Secretary of State’s Office has refused to answer their questions. We heard all you have to do today is call the Secretary of State and they’ll answer. That is not true. We have, for 8 years, some of our candidates, tried to get our questions answered, and it has not happened. So we’re concerned what’s going to happen to us. We may have no candidates. Of course, some people may be very happy about that, and maybe that’s the purpose of this, I don’t know, to discriminate against us.
This, I think, is one of the very most objectionable portions of this legislation. On page 23, line 35, it says “Each committee for political action,” and then it talks about “person or group of persons organized formally or informally who advocates the passage or defeat of a question or group of questions on the ballot at a primary election.” Let’s just talk about that a minute. What do they have to do? If you look down below on page 43, this person or group of persons has to file with the Secretary of State. How does an informally organized group file with the Secretary of State? If they’re informally organized, how do you even have anybody to file? How do you even know who they are? How do you know if you and your next-door neighbor just didn’t get together and decide you were against this? This is absolutely incredible to think that we would require an informal group that doesn’t even exist to file with the Secretary of State and come under all of these draconian filing requirements. If you want to stop citizen participation, you’ve got a bill here that’s going to do it. If people start finding out that they can’t even have an informal group to discuss a ballot question, they’re going to have to file, what do you think is going to happen? This absolutely denies us our freedom of speech, and it’s absolutely objectionable.
[Ms. Hansen, continued] What about other groups? This was originally meant to deal with political action committees. This wasn’t meant to go out in a tremendously expansive form to do this. I want to talk a little bit about that. I stopped some of the things I was doing, because I refused to file. I have filed with the Secretary of State, one of my organizations, the Nevada Families Political Action Committee, but I don’t do any work under that anymore. Why? Because I refused to give to the Secretary of State the names of the people that donate to my organization. Why? Because they often suffer persecution.
You can’t believe the kinds of things I’ve had to endure over the years. Perhaps you have, too. I came to my office one day and there was satanic pornography pasted all over my windows. I go by my maiden name, Hansen. Why? Because years ago, my children and I were threatened—death threats—because of my political activity. I was just talking about this to Senator Coffin today. I have received oftentimes ten viruses a day sent specifically to my computer in an effort to try to crash it. People have picketed outside my office. I picket. I understand that. I accept that. But what is going on here?
One of the reasons, as outlined in Buckley v. Vallejo and the NAACP case, that organizations were concerned about filing all the names is because they would be subject to persecution. In the Bugle, which is a homosexual newspaper in Las Vegas, they encourage people to go to the Secretary of State’s site in order to find out who supported Question 2 in order to boycott them and persecute them. This is the kind of thing that this information can be used for. Do you think that would stymie public participation in the process if they knew if they participated in a particular ballot question or with a particular candidate and then they were going to get boycotted? My brother, years ago, lost his job because the homosexuals picketed in front of his law office, and they gave him the choice: you either get out of politics, or you’re out of here. He chose to get out of there so he could continue to participate in politics. This is the kind of thing that is reality that goes on. People can be persecuted by these things. This definition here is absolutely incredible.
Let me just talk about an organized group. We have the Nevada Families Voter Guide that we publish every election year. We’ve been publishing this since 1988. We stopped endorsing any candidates because we didn’t want to give any names to the Secretary of State, which I’ve talked about. One of the things we do is we make recommendations for questions on the statewide ballot as an editorial policy of our newspaper, which we publish. Under this, we would have to file with the Secretary of State, unless we filed as a newspaper. Now maybe we do fall under the newspaper, because newspapers, they don’t have to file anything. They can have any kind of editorial policy they want, but if you’re in a group of citizens or an organization, your freedom of speech is denied, because only the press has freedom of press. Individual people don’t have that.
[Ms. Hansen continued] In my voter guide, I’ve made this statement: “The Nevada Families Voter Guide is published under authority of our inalienable God-given rights as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.” The First Amendment rights of freedom of religion, speech, press, petition, and association, and the Nevada Constitution Articles 1, Sections 1, 4, 9, and 10. We have a right to participate in this. We are expending huge amounts of money to endorse a particular ballot question. We’re not donating to an organization that is specifically designed to promote a particular ballot question. We’re just giving our recommendations to the people who read our voter guide. Now we’ll have to file with the Secretary of State? What are we going to do, completely withdraw from the election process, because they’re putting so many draconian requirements upon us? I just can’t believe it. I foresaw this years ago when I began objecting to these things. Now it’s getting worse, and worse, and worse, and nothing has improved in the election process.
I’m going to try to finish up here as fast as I can. On page 33, “The Secretary of State shall reject any statement of financial disclosure that is incomplete.” I already discussed that. I’m very concerned about what “incomplete” means and who determines that and what kind of protection you have and what kind of appeal process that you have, and so forth with regard to their determination of that.
Also, on the bottom of page 35, line 42 talks about, “The Secretary of State may, for good cause shown, waive or reduce the civil penalty.” We’ve been in conflict with the Ethics Commission who this was formerly under. We’ve been in conflict with them. Part of this is going to court on the 11th regarding this, because we feel that this has been enforced with unequal enforcement, and that our constitutional concerns have not been recognized. If you just go along with the Secretary of State, maybe they’ll reduce your fine. Otherwise, like us, you’ll end up in court, which we are glad to do, because we feel this is a very important issue.
I appreciate your very careful consideration of this. I think that we’ve just gone too far in all of this. I said that would happen from the beginning, and I’m sorry that my words have come to fruition, because I think we need to turn the corner and go back the other way so it makes it easier for people to participate in the process. Isn’t that what we want? We want people to participate. We don’t want to create all these artificial and unnecessary barriers. I plead with you to recognize how much time it takes and how much money it takes to challenge any of these things. I recognize that you have been very sensitive to these concerns that we’ve expressed, and I continue to show my appreciation to you. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman and members of the Committee.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you, Janine. We’ve learned in this Committee to value your discussion. You’re very passionate this evening, so thank you very much.
Merritt Yochum, Independent American Party:
[Introduced himself] It’s beyond my capability to add anything to what Janine has already said. I just want to second the motion. Anyway, I do want to say this: Maybe I had some sort of an illusion somewhere, but I’ve been under the impression that laws were supposed to address a good thing, do a good thing. I cannot see where this thing here has done any good thing. Can anybody tell me what’s good about it? I think from the comments I’ve heard from the Committee that we’re not alone in our disgust and dissatisfaction with this whole reporting procedure. I think the best thing to do here is to just abolish the whole thing.
Lucille Lusk, Nevada Concerned Citizens:
[Introduced herself] I have just a few brief comments. The vast majority of our concerns have been addressed by either Committee members or individuals who have spoken. I would like to just mention that at the beginning of the presentation on this bill, the Secretary said that this bill and some of his others would help to increase voter registration and participation. It is absolutely beyond my ability to comprehend how anything in this bill can increase voter participation. It certainly does not lead to increasing participation of citizens who might be willing to run for office and have to wade through much of this nonsense.
I would like to bring to your attention a couple of specific things. On page 2, the reference to the Secretary of State conducting investigations, I just want to ask a question for you to answer in your own time. If investigations are required, does the Secretary of State’s Office actually have investigatory agents with this ability, or does that more properly belong with the Attorney General’s Office, if, in fact, it’s required at all?
[Ms. Lusk, continued] On lines 15 through 19, there’s been much discussion about “incomplete” or “untrue” information. The words here say something, I think, different than what the Secretary indicated. They say that any person or entity that provides incomplete or untrue information is subject to a civil penalty. It doesn’t say that they willfully provided it. It makes it a per se violation. It doesn’t say anywhere in here that the Secretary will in fact do all those nice things to let you know and give you a chance to correct it. It does say, on page 3, that if it’s incomplete, he shall notify you, but it doesn’t say anything about allowing you time to correct the error or working with you to correct the error. There’s none of that in here. What’s actually here is a very cold statement that if you in fact submit a report with an error, that report will be rejected and considered not filed and that you are guilty. That is what’s really here.
I just want to turn to the couple of items that were referenced for amendment—the requiring of electronic filing and the 24-hour reporting. Ms. Pierce, I think, raised the question of individuals who perhaps don’t have computer skills. This is a potentially discriminatory requirement. It was mentioned several times that many of these things have been patterned on the FEC. There is a very big difference between individuals running a federal campaign and perhaps someone running for a school board for the very first time. I’ve done both, and let me tell you, the FEC requirements are horrible. They are far worse than what we have, so why make ours as bad as theirs? It makes no sense. I had a bright volunteer treasurer for my campaign, and she did a pretty good job, but she ran afoul of one detail with the FEC, and it took three years of communication to the FEC before that could get released. It was so bad, this gal dropped out of politics forever. She said, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand the pressure. They’re on my back.” She gave it back to me, and I finished it. She worked with it for a year and a half. It took me another year and a half to resolve it.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Lucille, they made us all have to get employer ID numbers and then that other special form, now they finally repealed that form, is that what you were going to talk about?
Lucille Lusk:
It’s on the lines of absurd. I, too, have had experience with the Secretary of State’s Office with their unwillingness to answer any question. I will say this: I have always found them to be very courteous, but not very helpful. I guess I just plead with you not to place more authority in an office that has not yet been able to handle the authority it has. Thank you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much for you testimony.
Assemblyman Beers:
I was going to add that for four or five years I was the volunteer treasurer for the state Republican Party, and in that capacity prepared the FEC reports by hand and agree completely with Mrs. Lusk’s analysis, and probably should have quit politics forever at the conclusion of that engagement.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Is there anyone else who wishes to testify on this bill? I think in everyone’s mind we want to do what’s best. It’s just sometimes hard to get what’s the best, the most easily understandable, so that we don’t cause people to not want to participate in politics. On the other end, make sure that people that choose to be in the public eye comply with our rules, but the rules are reasonable. I think that’s just what we’re going to try to get here if we can. I don’t see anyone else to testify on this bill, so we will close the hearing on A.B. 529. Okay, Renee. We appreciate your being here to take the heat from time to time. It’s nothing personal. A.B. 527.
Assembly Bill 527: Makes various changes concerning elections. (BDR 24-413)
Renee Parker, Chief Deputy Secretary of State:
[Introduced herself] Mr. Heller did ask me to inform you that with respect to the questions that have been asked of our office, we’ll be happy to provide the Committee with a list of those questions that we have failed to respond to. Some of them are the type of questions, for example, “Why is the Secretary of State continually violating the Book of Mormon?” Those are the types of questions that we do not respond to (Exhibit J). We only respond to those questions that do relate to our duties and questions in our capacity. We also don’t give legal advice, so when a question is asked of our office to the extent that it relates to legal advice we’re prohibited by statute from giving that. But we will provide some of those questions to the Committee.
Assembly Bill 527 is our bill, and it is intended to meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act [HAVA] and to bring state law into compliance with that Act. You should have a proposed amendment to this bill (Exhibit K). Our office met with the clerks and the registrars, and we had some of the language that maybe I wasn’t clear on when we submitted it to Legal or in working with Legal in making all of the HAVA changes in one bill. There are a couple of issues that need to be addressed. I guess what I’ll do is I’ll walk through section by section of the bill, and then address the amendments as they come along.
[Ms. Parker, continued] There are a couple of amendments to amend the bill as a whole. The first one is to add a new section that moves the date of the primary back. The date that is chosen is really just a shot in the dark and a guess between the Secretary of State’s Office and the county clerks of what would work the best. There appears to be no great date, because you have issues of the first day of school, and issues of the county clerks being required to deal with collection of tax monies on certain dates. This was the best date that we could come up with, recognizing that with the new requirements for provisional balloting, the county clerks may not have time to carry out their duties unless the date of the primary election is moved back. That first amendment is intended to add a section to address that issue if the Committee so chooses.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Is there any reason why we can’t move it back farther?
Renee Parker:
Absolutely not. It’s just a question of what the Committee chooses.
Assemblywoman McClain:
I really would love to see a June primary. I don’t know if that would work for the clerk and the registrars.
Renee Parker:
That raises other issues of being in the middle of the summer and the access to the schools, etcetera. This was kind of the best date. There is no reason why it couldn’t be moved back to another date, unless it conflicts with some other statutory deadline, like when they have to collect taxes or something like that.
The second amendment to amend the bill as a whole is to add a new section to state if a voter casts a provisional ballot for the wrong ballot, the provisional ballot shall not be counted. Under the Help America Vote Act, whether the provisional ballot is counted is up to state law. This is in the proposed amendment, because I have other amendments in here that we have concerns with provisional balloting, provisional ballots only being provided for federal elections. If they were provided for federal, state, for all elections that the voter would be eligible to vote in, then this amendment would need to be considered.
Section 2 of the bill requires a statewide voter registration list be established, an official list in the uniform centralized and interactive computerized list. This basically tracks the language in the Help America Vote Act. We did have a proposed amendment. Section 3 put all the requirements in there from the Help America Vote Act for the statewide voter registration list. We did have a proposed amendment to delete Section 3, subsection 2(h), at line 24. That’s a former version of the Help America Vote Act. It required that the statewide voter registration system be accessible from all polling places. It would be our intention if the statewide voter registration system that’s chosen, if that is a possibility, has laptops at all the polling places. The concern the clerks and the registrars have is it also goes into interfacing issues with tabulation systems, or other systems and the costs may be prohibitive to include that as part of the system. It is not required under HAVA. It would be a goal if there were money available and we did have the ability to do that. Given that it’s not a requirement, we don’t think it should be contained in the legislation, because it may be cost-prohibitive.
[Ms. Parker continued] Section 3, subsections 4 and 5 also address other requirements in HAVA for the statewide voter registration system and the interfacing with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
Section 4 is addressing the requirements in Section 301 of the Help America Vote Act for counties that continue to use paper ballots or punch cards.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Subsections 4 and 5 that you’re talking about in Section 3, interfacing with the Department of Motor Vehicles and then Social Security Administration. What exactly are they checking to verify accuracy of information?
Renee Parker:
Under the Help America Vote Act, we’re required to interface with the Department of Motor Vehicles to ensure that the information they receive, double check the driver’s license information, if that information is provided. They in turn are required to interface with Social Security to verify any Social Security information. The act does require if you have a Social Security card or a driver’s license that you have to provide that information. If you don’t, then you’re assigned a unique identifier once the statewide registration system is in place. This is just for us to be able to verify that the information provided is accurate. That’s what the act provides. We have to be able to engage in some process to verify that the information that’s been provided is accurate. That’s the intention.
Assemblywoman McClain:
That’s going to be the Secretary of State’s Office that would be doing that?
Renee Parker:
We’re required under the Act to enter into the agreement with the Department of Motor Vehicles. They in turn are required to enter into the agreement with the Social Security Administration. We’re also required to be interfaced with other systems for vital statistics, et cetera.
Assemblywoman McClain:
Do you have computer systems compatible to do that?
Renee Parker:
The intention is that the statewide voter registration system that’s chosen will be part of that process. It’s a requirement that they be able to interface with the DMV system. We had discussions with DMV representatives. They have an agreement with the Social Security Administration, because they currently match information. They do pay for that. I don’t remember what the cost is, a penny per inquiry or something. The question that has arisen is whether the Help America Vote Act can assist them in saying, “We don’t pay for it anymore, because it’s implied in the Act that we have to get this information, and we may not have to pay.” That’s a question that’s out there, and I don’t know the answer to that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Section 8(b) on page 4, “The reason for casting the provisional ballot.” They have to fill that out at the polling place? What would be the types of reasons that they could list?
Larry Lomax, Clark County Registrar of Voters:
[Introduced himself] Let me emphasize that the Help America Vote Act is the most significant piece of legislation affecting elections since 1993. It’s going to implement huge changes around the country, and this is the legislation that directs it. Most of this is federally mandated, and this is just our attempt to get it into Nevada Revised Statutes. It’s very important. I know you’ve been here for three hours, but this is the most important stuff from our perspective as election officials that you’re going to hear this session. It’s critical that you understand it. It’s extremely complex. This is a terrible time for you to have to sit here and wade through this, because it’s very detailed and very technical.
However, to answer your question as to what situations allow for provisional voting. The first is if a voter does not show up on our registration rolls. They show up, we don’t show them as registered. Under the new law, we are required to let them vote. They will vote a provisional ballot. That ballot will be set aside. We will research it for some period of time—we have it defined later on in this law—until we determine whether or not that vote should be counted.
[Mr. Lomax, continued] The second category is identification. The Help America Vote Act requires that when you register to vote, you show ID. If you register to vote by mail and therefore don’t show an ID because you registered by mail, you will be required to show an ID the first time you vote, an ID confirming identity and residence. I know there are some people in the room who don’t like that, but that’s the new federal law. That will stay in effect until a statewide voter registration system is in place, which can verify your driver’s license number or, if you do not have a Nevada driver’s license, can verify the last four digits of your Social Security number. If you sign an affidavit stating you have neither a driver’s license nor a Social Security number, only then will you be assigned a make-believe unique identifying number. So the second time you would vote provisionally is if you registered to vote by mail, you’re required to show ID at the polling place, but you show at the polling place you don’t have your ID, you forgot it or whatever, then you would vote provisionally. We recommend in the law that you would then have seven days to provide that ID to the registrar. That would allow enough time to either mail it into us or to bring it in person.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
The provisional voting only applies to the federal races.
Larry Lomax:
The federal law can only mandate federal elections.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Correct.
Larry Lomax:
Not federal races.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Federal elections. Sorry.
Larry Lomax:
If I can suggest, I saw the words “federal races” got inserted in here. If you look at it from the perspective of me running an election, a voter shows up, I made a mistake, they’re not on the rolls, they’re going to have to vote provisionally. I don’t want to have to tell them, “Okay, you only get to vote for the federal races, because we might have made a mistake.” I’d much rather let them vote whatever ballot they’re entitled to vote provisionally. It’s not going to make my life any harder or easier, because I’m still going to have to research, after the fact, whether or not that person is eligible to vote.
Second case is the voter registered by mail, forgot to bring in their ID on Election Day. Same argument applies. I don’t want to have to tell them, “Well, you only get to vote for President, a Senator, and a Congressman.”
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They wouldn’t be able to vote that, though.
Larry Lomax:
Why wouldn’t they?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
They’d only be able to vote the local races, not the federal.
Larry Lomax:
Why do you say that?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Because if the provisional only affects the federal races, why would they be allowed to vote that and not everything else on their ballot?
Larry Lomax:
No. What the federal government can only mandate is that we allow provisional voting on federal races, they can’t direct the state to do anything else. We, the state, can say, “Provisional voters get to vote the ballot they’re entitled to vote.” Then we decide after the fact whether it could be counted or not.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So we could say, “Because you didn’t bring your ID for the federal component [you can’t vote locally].”
Larry Lomax:
Correct. Because it’s a federal election, they’ve got to bring an ID. What I recommend is we let them vote whatever ballot they’re entitled to vote in a provisional manner.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
What if they say, “I don’t want to show you an ID,” when they go to register?
Larry Lomax:
Nevada law already requires, if you look at NRS 293.517, if you register in person, you’re required to show us an ID as proof of residence and identity. It’s already in there. You’d have to take that out.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
If that’s the case, there’s a ton of people walking around that have never bothered to change their driver’s license, let alone register their cars, so I’d be curious what ID they would be showing anybody.
Larry Lomax:
The reason they get around it now is because in 1993 the Federal Motor Voter Act was passed. That said we have to accept registrations by mail, and they don’t have to show ID by mail. Nevada never amended their laws to require asking for an ID at the polling place. We have to interpret, until this Help America Vote Act, we have to assume the person registered by mail. Therefore, we can’t ask them for an ID at the polling place even though Nevada law says if you registered in person you have to show an ID because other people can register by mail, they can show up on Election Day. We don’t ask for ID because we’re not authorized to.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So you’re going to have two sets of people, those that registered before this that don’t have to show an ID.
Larry Lomax:
Absolutely. Everybody that registered before January 1, 2003, is exempt. This law took effect January 1, 2003.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Technically, those individuals do not have to show you an ID. They don’t have to vote a provisional ballot. Correct?
Larry Lomax:
Correct. If you registered before January 1, 2003. This is only the first time you vote. If you registered by mail and have never showed an ID, then the first time you vote, you have to show an ID. From that point on, you never do again.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
For those individuals that might conscientiously object, and by our Constitution, the qualified elector doesn’t speak to any of this stuff.
Larry Lomax:
With all due respect, there’s a federal law that now says you have to do this in federal races. That’s what the law says.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So maybe part of what we need to determine as a policy decision is the garbage that they put down from the federal government, or the mandates, only will apply to federal races, and we don’t have to do that for the other races that are out there. That’s a policy decision that we have to make, right?
Larry Lomax:
Are you implying in an even-year election, a federal election, we’re going to have certain people who are—That means I’m going to have to create 300 and God knows how many additional ballot styles that would deal with people who refuse to show an ID and vote for federal offices.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
That’s a possibility, but the feds didn’t even think about that part of it, did they?
Larry Lomax:
With all due respect again, I don’t think that’s a wise decision. The workload there sounds easy to you, but that’s—
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Could we conscientiously object as a state?
Larry Lomax:
You can conscientiously object, but the federal government has made it very clear, the Attorney General sent a letter just recently to all the governors, so the Governor should have his copy, and their threat, whether they’re going to carry it out or not, is they have the authority to take over our elections. They have made it very clear. That’s what they state they will do.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Then we can make them even messier than they’ve already made them, if that’s the case. That’s their problem.
Larry Lomax:
Again, I’d be the one that would have to deal with it, not you.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
All because of one state we had to go to this kind of a — We’ve never had a problem here.
Larry Lomax:
I could not agree with you more, but this is the law that was passed.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
There are laws that were made to be broken.
Renee Parker:
We would also be ineligible for the federal funds to help us comply with the Help America Vote Act if we didn’t comply with that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I appreciate that, but the federal funds are not going to even come close to covering that.
Assemblyman Beers:
We wouldn’t qualify for the federal money. Oh, shoot. On the upside, when you say having to duplicate the 300 new ballots, we are trying to reduce that gross number with the maps that we looked at earlier. Any silver lining on a dark cloud there for you, Mr. Lomax.
Has anybody yet undertaken a suit against the federal government for this pretty clear violation of the federal government’s constitutional authority infringing upon Nevada’s sovereignty? In any state? So we’re just all sheep going down the path here.
Assemblyman Conklin:
We do rank 50th in federal grants and aid, so I don’t know why we’d be any different with this.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Could we not just do a handful of ballots that just say “President” and “Vice President,” and if somebody doesn’t show, those get set aside and we just go along with what our elections are currently? Because that’s really all they have control over. Not even the Senate and the Congress, because they’re our representatives to Congress.
Dan Burk, Washoe County Registrar of Voters:
[Introduced himself] I just want to come back to one point here while we’re talking about this, and that is that the purpose of the provisional ballot provision in itself is to make sure that no person who should have been included in the registration and should have the right to vote is denied the right to vote. The whole purpose of the provisional ballot provision itself is to make sure that it isn’t some administrative error on my part or one of the other registrar’s parts that kept a person from having the right to vote.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I appreciate that. Let me ask you this, then. What happens currently? I happened to be dropping somebody off and they went in and they couldn’t find him on the poll. Luckily, on the third computer that they got to, they were able to pull him up. He didn’t think he was going to be able to vote. Don’t you give them a challenge ballot at that time?
Dan Burk:
Absolutely not.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So if they don’t show on your forms — What if they have a voter ID card that you’ve sent out?
Larry Lomax:
I can only speak for Clark County. First of all, we’re up to the point about half of the polling places now have a laptop with their entire voter database on it. They have access to our full database, and then we have a phone relay system where if you don’t have it, you call the other polling place that does have that database. If you’re not on our database, and we can’t find any, they’ll call back to our home office, and we’ll do a little research. If we can’t find any record of you, Nevada does not have provisional voting, so the answer is no, you don’t vote.
Assemblyman Beers:
I’m cogitating on your explanation of the intent behind this, and I don’t get it. If that were true, then the rules would say you can provisionally vote, and then we check and make sure you didn’t get excluded from voter rolls because you’re properly registered within the deadline. But in fact, that’s not what this says. This says you need no advance planning. You do not need to register at all, just show up.
Dan Burk:
That’s exactly the opposite of what it does. It provides, specifically, that that ballot be sealed, set aside, not counted in the process, and then we have our process of about five working days, in other words seven calendar days, for us to research whether or not there was an error on our part, some mistake we made, something that was done by perhaps DMV or our part that actually this person should have had the right to vote, that they met the standard. Therefore, we can count their ballot. This is a safety net so that if there’s a mistake on our part, the citizen is not disenfranchised by mistake on our part. That was Congress’s intent. It was actually an honorable intent. You can argue that maybe they shouldn’t have any business talking about some of this or not, but the bottom line is they want to make sure we don’t make a mistake that disenfranchises somebody.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Tell me how you would find out if you had made a mistake.
Assemblyman Beers:
Better yet, Madam Chair, we have these two gentlemen representing better than 90 percent of the voters in the state of Nevada. How many cases have you come across in the last five years where you’ve had someone make the claim of potential disenfranchisement under those circumstances?
Dan Burk:
We were actually quoted in the newspaper after the 2000 election saying that we had over, I think, 200 cases. I want to say 400, but 200 cases where we know that people claimed that they were registered. Of course, we were not able to determine whether or not they were or not. We believe this is partly because the National Voter Registration Act, which Larry referred to, from 1993, specifically says we can have no information about DMV’s declination. If somebody comes in and says, “I don’t want to do it. I want to register my car, but I don’t want to register to vote at this time,” a lot of people believe that they do register at the time they go to DMV. Consequently, they think they’re registered to vote, so they show up at our office in order to vote. My point is that there are a lot of people who come in believing that they’re registered to vote and find out they’re not. Either because they’ve been purged out of our system, because they’ve gone through two federal elections and have never voted and not responded to anything we sent them, or because they’ve gone to DMV, or perhaps my office made a mistake. The whole point is to bring this forward to the point where it’s not an administrative process that we make a mistake.
Assemblyman Beers:
What I didn’t hear you say was, “The number of cases in which my office made a mistake is X.” Is that because you can’t tell?
Dan Burk:
That’s absolutely true. We have not tried to track it. One time we tried to track how many people called us and said they thought they should have been, but we didn’t ever try to go through and then research every single thing after the election, which is required now under the provisional voting procedure under the Help America Vote Act for us to do that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
How can you research if you don’t have any information?
Dan Burk:
I honestly believe, Madam Chairwoman, that that’s true. I don’t think that most of these people are going to have any standing at all. I believe most of them will be found not to do so.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So we’re going to change our entire voting procedure, our entire ballot, our entire count day for an unknown group that probably would not be verified in the first place.
Dan Burk:
On the other hand, Madam Chairwoman, if we had a race between two people—and I believe Assembly 30, between Gustavson and Smith, was decided by 28 ballots—I would like to believe that there isn’t something that I did or failed to do on my part that caused somebody to lose the right to have that seat.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
That wasn’t part of the challenge. I believe they did an actual count there. While unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at the outcome, I don’t think there was any challenge about whether or not someone was not given the opportunity to vote that thought they had registered at DMV. And you’re quite correct. People do go down, they think when they register their car, they’re also registering. “Do you want to register to vote?” “Yeah.” “Okay.” They never fill out a single document. Sorry, they’re not registered. If there’s nothing that you could do differently to give them a provisional ballot, you can give them the ballot, then they expect that they’re able to vote. That ballot is not going to count, and then you hold everybody’s election up for seven days.
Dan Burk:
This is my 24th year in this business of running elections, and I will tell you that every single election that I have ever administered, there is somebody who we found out should have been in the books, should have been on the file, that we had made some mistake, we didn’t carry through on information, something’s not right in our file. Yes, we do have the information. Usually they call in, and we tell the people the polling place. Yeah, go ahead and let them vote, let them sign the—
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
And that’s a challenge ballot that they’re allowed to vote, correct? That’s the procedure now.
Dan Burk:
There is a challenge ballot process, yes.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
It is for your federal races, because if you do—
Dan Burk:
That’s not a challenge ballot.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Maybe I’m using the wrong term.
Dan Burk:
There is a process by which they can do it, but a challenge ballot, when somebody specifically is standing in line, or a person working there actually believes that the individual there is not in a primary, is not even a member of that party, is not the person they claim to be, or does not live in the location they claim to. That’s truly a challenge ballot. This is not a challenge ballot.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
What are we going to do with people that are homeless who do not have ID nor proof or residency?
Larry Lomax:
We’re bouncing around from subject to subject. That was one category, the people who don’t show on our registration rolls. The other category this law talks about is this ID requirement. There are provisions already in Nevada Revised Statutes for homeless. There are provisions in this for people who don’t have ID. They just say they don’t have an ID, and then they don’t have an ID.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
So what’s the point of it then?
Larry Lomax:
I didn’t write the law. What we’re trying to do is explain to you what the federal law requires. This is what the federal law requires. If Nevada chooses not to comply with the—
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think at some point if we have a disagreement with the federal government, then we have the right to note that. That’s our responsibility. If we think something is not workable, I think we also have a responsibility to say that we don’t believe that this is workable. These are our election laws, and we control the state election laws, and we aren’t going to do it that way. That’s our policy decision to make.
Larry Lomax:
We’re just here to try to bring you the information and let you know what’s required.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I have deep sympathy for all of you who have to administer this next election, truly. Renee, has this bill been exempted because it has a fiscal impact? Is it on the exemption list? It’s not noted on the top.
Renee Parker:
I don’t know the answer to that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Could you or Dean check with Mark Stevens, because that would give me greater pause. We could continue this discussion and not have to worry about moving something out by next week if it were not to be an exempted bill.
Assemblyman Beers:
As a follow up to what our Chair has just stated, is the sole penalty for us rejecting HAVA’s mandate not being able to take the money that’s associated with it, or some other, like we were supposed to put chemical stabilizer on all vacant land in Clark County or face the loss of highway funds? Is there some ramification beyond the immediate that we need to know about in contemplating rejecting this?
Renee Parker:
In addition to not receiving the money, there is, as Mr. Lomax alluded to earlier, the federal government could come in and take over the election. We could be deemed a pre-clearance state like 13 other states, and everything we do with respect to elections, every decision that’s made, has to be run through the Department of Justice first, and approved by the Department of Justice.
Larry Lomax:
I will point out even the simple thing you addressed just now about changing the precinct boundaries would no longer be Nevada’s option. Everything has to be cleared by the Department of Justice once you’ve been taken over. You can’t change a precinct, a polling place—
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Then you know what, if they came here, they might regret it.
Assemblyman Beers:
I think they would. Historically, the Department of Justice, the pre-clearance states have been states that, if I’m not mistaken, all of the pre-clearance states date back to the advent of racial equality under the law, and these were states that refused to engage in racial equality. Is that correct?
Alan Glover, Carson City Clerk-Recorder:
[Introduced himself] Mr. Beers, it’s my understanding, and this is from several conferences I’ve gone to where you sit with some of the other clerks, that actually they are adding counties onto that in there. There was a period here a few years ago where more counties were added, mostly in the northern states where that happened. Traditionally, it was in the southern states, but I understand, according to the clerks and the people we’re talking to, they were adding more northern counties.
Assemblyman Beers:
Were the counties that were being added into the pre-clearance list being added in solely for issues related to reapportionment?
Alan Glover:
The way I understand it, they were being added on because of civil rights violations or areas like that, the traditional areas when the law was passed.
Assemblyman Beers:
The only expression of civil rights in the purview of elections law or committee, however, is really reapportionment.
Larry Lomax:
Minority language provisions, too. That was an amendment in 1975 to the Civil Rights Act.
Assemblyman Beers:
That would relate to multilingual ballots that are presented in multiple languages.
Larry Lomax:
There are some counties there that just got sued by the Justice Department for refusing to comply with their minority language provisions.
Renee Parker:
Our advice, take it for what it’s worth, but we don’t think that it would be prudent to choose not to comply with HAVA, and I’ll give you a [hypothetical] circumstance. Say the federal government sues us for noncompliance. They get an injunction, they take us to court, the court directs that we must comply with HAVA. We have a court order requiring us to comply with HAVA. We are estimating the voting system upgrades throughout the state that are required under this bill, the statewide voter registration system that’s required under this bill, all those things will cost around $10 million. We’re estimating approximately $18 million that the state is eligible for under HAVA, and most of those funds would be necessary to comply. Assuming that there was a court order directing that the state had to comply, and we had nowhere else to go to assert noncompliance, we would not be eligible to receive any of those federal funds to assist us with complying at that point if we chose now not to comply. So that’s a scenario that, given the state’s fiscal issues, is—
Assemblyman Beers:
Well, given the state’s fiscal issues, which is that we’re on the verge of losing extracurricular activities in schools, it seems the height of lunacy to spend $10 million on this.
Renee Parker:
Part of the purpose of the voting system upgrades under the Act is to provide better accessibility for the disabled and meet the minority language requirements. If you don’t think that it’s prudent to expend funds to meet those goals, we think those are honorable goals.
Assemblyman Beers:
I think having middle school basketball is more important. Yes, I do think having middle school basketball is more important.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I will point out that we’re pretty much in compliance on both of those matters based on laws that we’ve passed in the past. We may have not provided all the funding that Larry needs, and Alan needs, and Dan needs to buy some of the equipment, but we did change our laws last session, the session before.
Larry Lomax:
This is really critical we understand this, because I fully agree. I’ve said over and over again in talks that I’ve given that Nevada has, in my opinion, the best laws in the country as far as conducting elections. We can conduct them efficiently and get the results out on time. I like early voting. You may not. But we have a good way of doing it. Anyone who wants to can vote absentee. We run good elections in Nevada. Unfortunately, stuff happened in Florida a couple of years ago, and now we’re paying the price along with the rest of the country.
This law was fought over for a long time in Congress. The disabled community lobbied very heavily and, in my opinion, incorrectly in the sense that this law states that we have to accommodate. Any disabled voter must be able to vote unassisted in any polling place in the country. In my opinion, that’s a great altruistic goal, but realistically doesn’t make a lot of sense. I could put voting machines to accommodate disabled voters in 20 of my polling places and let them travel there and vote and save millions of dollars, and I mean millions of dollars. But instead, this law says in all 325. It will be 400 polling places by 2006. I’ve got to be able to accommodate them unassisted in every one of those. You multiply that times the state, it’s millions of dollars. But that’s what this law says.
You have some weighty decisions to make, because what Renee said is true. This law says, also, whether you accept federal money or not, you will comply. So you’re going to have to roll the dice if you choose not to comply with this. I’d at least get some real good assessments from legal people on what your chances are on winning, because if Nevada is forced to comply, it will have to come out of more extracurricular activities and parks and everything else. You won’t have that state money.
Assemblyman McCleary:
I think it’s a matter of principle. At some point we’ve got to stand up to a federal government that wants to micromanage us. Eventually, we won’t need this legislative body, because they’ll make all the laws. They’re going to have to move into your zoning areas eventually, too. I think as a matter of principle we should stand up and tell them “no,” and fight them. If nothing else, we will get the publicity, and they’ll get the message. I don’t know. I’m very sorry about that. Thank you.
Assemblyman Beers:
I’m wondering if our Committee wouldn’t be well served by passing a law mandating that the federal government conduct their elections the way we conduct our elections. We could do that.
Renee Parker:
It wouldn’t be binding on the federal government.
Assemblyman Beers:
Why is it binding on us? They have absolutely no constitutional authority to be dipping their toes into our waters like this. Zero.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
There are a few historians that may disagree. I raised this issue. I’m sorry. I don’t think we’re saying we don’t comply. We comply with where we feel reasonableness exists and what we can do to make sure that our voters are not disenfranchised. I think that’s our obligation. If we think that some sections of this are irresponsible, or work contrary to what we think, then I think that’s worthwhile for us to have as a discussion. It doesn’t bother me that we ask for a resolution, because we really can’t do a binding. But we could ask for a resolution asking Congress to reconsider and give them copies of our election laws and have our Senators and Congresspeople say it on the floor.
There are some strategies, because we’re just going to waste so much time, money, and effort to try and implement something that really wasn’t broken. There may be components of this that make very good sense. What I’m going to suggest to the Committee, since it’s 7:00 p.m.—and Renee, it is not on the exempt list, so if you could make sure that that occurs. I’ll reschedule this, and this is all we’ll focus on. We can take some time, maybe take a section-by-section analysis, and really think it through—what is current, what’s really required, what can we massage, and what do we absolutely disagree with—and see where we might want to land as a Committee. That will give us at least a little bit more time to be able to take that up.
Renee Parker:
Madam Chairwoman, I understand where you’re coming from if that’s how you want to proceed. Our concern is by July 1, the Governor, in consultation with the Secretary of State, has to certify to the federal government our state plan to comply with HAVA. Most of that is based on the fact that we’ve got legislation to comply with. One of the statements they have to make is that we are doing to comply. If you choose not to comply, we need to know that, because we are not going to be eligible for any of the federal funds, even for the components that you choose to comply with. So if you’re going to pick and choose, we can’t certify that.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
We could suggest on that form with the Governor and the Secretary of State that it could say we will comply in good faith as best as we can within the funding that you will provide us, by the time you provide it to us.
Renee Parker:
That’s not an option. We will not be able to make that certification. We will immediately be required to declare everything through the Department of Justice. It’s in the Act. Even if you choose not to accept federal funds, you do have to submit the plan to the Department of Justice, and then we will, at that point, at the point that you decide this, if you decide this in the next month, we are ineligible for any federal funds to help us comply. Even with those components you choose to comply with.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I think we understand that.
Renee Parker:
That’s one of my big concerns here.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I appreciate that, because you’re the one who has to carry it out. But we still have an obligation to make good policy as best as we can, to make good laws as best as we can, and our laws don’t seem to be broken. We’ll do our best to figure out what we need to do to comply with HAVA. There’s still another house. I don’t know what their feelings are regarding this. I think we have to spend a little more time to really get into the proper discussion that I don’t think we can do tonight.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I think we should remember that nobody is going to be able to comply with this on time. We need to just say we’re going to comply with it, and then we’ll do our best. The fact is that these kind of omnibus things come at states all the time, and if you’re six months late—
Larry Lomax:
With all due respect, 2004 elections, that’s the measure. These provisional voting things we were talking about, all of that has to be in place by 2004.
Assemblywoman Pierce:
I don’t think the provisional voting part is all that complicated. I would just say that I think we do a good job here, but Florida thought they were doing a good job, too.
Larry Lomax:
We do an excellent job, and you’ve created good laws under which we can conduct these elections. However, we have to deal with the hand that’s been dealt us. One thing I might suggest is whoever has the access, talk it over with Senator Reid and some of our [federal] legislators, and I think they can give you a feel for the seriousness. This was debated very hotly and very heavily for at least six months up there. A lot of these ID requirements were fought over tooth and nail. You might be able to get a better feel for it, if you’re going to get feisty with them, what the reaction might be up at that level from some of the people who actually work up there before we go too far down this, perhaps before we meet again.
Assemblyman Anderson:
I think we have a couple of options open to us that includes using the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) that would indicate that it’s not just a problem for the state of Nevada, but for the other state legislatures who are undoubtedly in every bit as great a financial difficulty as we are. The unfunded mandates from the federal government are just a little ridiculous. If they want to hold the Department of Justice over their heads for compliance with every single thing that comes along, I think there’s a major difference between the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and those amendments that have come along since then that have been brought into today’s fruition.
I think there are several really important ideas in here that we can utilize. I appreciate that we can’t meet the requirements of maybe getting enough machines purchased to meet the handicap requirement, and your observation that it is a goal that we should be working for. I think that if we show in good faith that we’re trying to work toward those things, they’re going to have to accept that. We have financial restraints just like they do. I don’t think they really want to take on that fight, but if they do, then I think we have an obligation to back up with the rest of the states so we all speak with a single voice. It would be an excellent opportunity through the two national groups that we belong to and utilize our voice collectively as individual states. Maybe then national government might pay attention, that 50 states do make a nation.
Renee Parker:
Madam Chairwoman, I think you mentioned NCSL. I think that would be a good resource. As I recall, I believe that there was a letter sent from NCSL to the Senators and Representatives, and I think it was introduced on the Senate Floor or on the House Floor in that conference committee report when they approved this. I think that would be a valuable resource, because I know they are helping the states and providing advice on whether you should comply with this statute.
Assemblyman Anderson:
It seems to me that we could have NCSL look through the requirements of which they believe that we’re mandated to minimum requirement as compared to maximum requirement. We’re not going to get there with the resources available to us at this particular junction in time. We’re not going to cut every other program in the state in order to fund this the way that it has to be funded.
Renee Parker:
You know that the federal government’s money has been appropriated to fund this bill. We have up to April 29 to apply for the first set of certifications for $5 million that’s sitting with the General Services Administration, right now, waiting for us to apply for the funds. There’s another $830 million that was appropriated to comply with this act under Title II. The state is eligible for $5.7 million, assuming we certify the state plan and say that we’re going to comply with the act by July 1. There has been federal money appropriated. It is sitting there.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
We need to wrap this up or we’re not going to get done this evening. I’m going to postpone any further testimony on this one. If it doesn’t get exempted, it dies, so maybe that works, too. If that’s the case, we can take this up after the 11th when we actually have more time to spend on this.
On A.B. 528, do you need this bill for your elections next week? It’s upon passage and approval. Larry, can you be here if I roll this to Tuesday?
Larry Lomax:
Are you talking about A.B. 528?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Right.
Larry Lomax:
Alan [Glover] can speak for me.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
With the indulgence of the Committee, the resolutions are exempted, so Ms. Weber and Ms. McClain, could I roll your resolutions to a later meeting, and then we’ll put A.B. 528 on for next Tuesday? It’s a big bill, so we’ll take the time to go through it. Does anybody have a section-by-section analysis of either of these that could kind of assist the Committee ahead of time?
Renee Parker:
I have one prepared for my testimony, so I can provide that. I have a couple of changes I need to make, and then I’ll provide it.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I can help focus our conversation, my own included, better for next Tuesday if that would be acceptable to the Committee. Thank you.
We’ll continue to wrap our arms around HAVA. I’ll have to think of a new acronym for it, though. It’s an interesting debate.
Let’s do the work session, because it’s pretty simple. I’ll ask Michelle [Van Geel] to go over A.B. 233.
Assembly Bill 233: Makes various changes concerning primary city elections and general city elections. (BDR 24-336)
Michelle Van Geel, LCB Research Division, Committee Policy Analyst:
[Introduced herself] Your work session document should be in your folder (Exhibit L). A.B. 233 makes various changes concerning primary city elections and general city elections. It was heard in the Committee on March 11, and Mary Henderson, representing the Nevada League of Cities of Municipalities, testified. The only proposed change to this bill is on page 2, line 4, to change the word “may” to “shall.”
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
I will also tell you that I spoke to Assemblyman Carpenter, who also would like that change. He said it would be easier for everybody in the long run if we just said, “Do it in November in those general election cities,” and that’s what the date is. That would comply with Ms. Henderson’s recommendation. I’d be happy to take a motion.
ASSEMBLYMAN GRADY MOVED TO AMEND AND DO PASS A.B. 233 WITH NO CHANGE.
ASSEMBLYMAN CONKLIN SECONDED THE MOTION.
Assemblyman Beers:
With this amendment, is this essentially requiring that the cities change their election dates to comply with November elections?
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Correct. In the general cities only, and there are 11 of those, if I remember right. So it doesn’t affect your urban cities. Are there any further questions?
THE MOTION CARRIED.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Sometime I think we should look at the ordinances for the larger cities, too, and just have one election at one time. It would make better sense.
Assembly Bill 328: Requires Secretary of State to submit advisory question to voters concerning regulation of sale and use of fireworks in all counties of State of Nevada. (BDR S-787)
A.B. 328 is Ms. Chowning’s bill that we rolled over to this time. I did speak to Ms. Chowning, and she would like the language as it was presented in the bill itself, without any reference to the former Class C fireworks. That was unnecessary language.
ASSEMBLYWOMAN McCLAIN MOVED TO DO PASS A.B. 328.
ASSEMBLYMAN CONKLIN SECONDED THE MOTION.
THE MOTION CARRIED.
Chairwoman Giunchigliani:
Thank you very much. Is there any further business to come before the Committee? Have a great evening. Thank you for hanging in there.
The meeting was adjourned at 7:15 p.m.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED:
Kelly Fisher
Committee Secretary
APPROVED BY:
Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, Chairwoman
DATE: