I have an admission to make: I didn’t feel comfortable returning my signature verification postcard, either.
In Washoe County, my discomfort was not particularly unusual. Thousands of voters brought the signature verification card sent to them by the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office to the county registrar of voters’ office for delivery. Like me, they also didn’t feel comfortable delivering the identifying information required to verify their signature — the voter’s birthdate or last four digits of their driver’s license or Social Security number — by mail, especially on an unsealed postcard.
I’ll be the first to admit that my reluctance wasn’t entirely rational. Birthdates aren’t a state secret by any stretch. Statutorily, every political party in the state can freely request a list of registered voters that includes every voter’s name, address, date of birth and telephone number. Those lists, in turn, are uploaded into national voter databases and delivered to armies of callers, texters and door-to-door canvassers.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to do any campaign work, you could just pay 1 cent to directly ask a state or county election official when my birthdate is. Or you could likely find it — or nearly anyone else’s — for free on the internet.
Even so, I wonder how many of the people who went to the registrar of voters’ office to turn in their signature verification postcards will vote in support of Question 7, which seeks to require Nevada’s voters to write the same discomfiting identifying information on their mail ballots.
If recent polls are any indication, the answer is likely quite a few of them.
Question 7 bills itself as a requirement for voters to provide identification before they receive a ballot — that is, in fact, the first line of the explanation for the question in the secretary of state’s 2024 Ballot Question Guide. In the abstract, that requirement is admittedly not unusual. Nevada is one of a minority of states that does not require voters to furnish identification immediately prior to the moment they cast their ballot.
That, however, is because the state verifies identities of voters when they register to vote and relies on signature verification to subsequently confirm each ballot is cast by a previously registered voter. In short, Nevada already requires voters to demonstrate proof of residence and identity before they vote — that verification just usually occurs at the Department of Motor Vehicles or in a county election official’s office instead of a polling place.
What is more unusual, however, is Question 7’s proposed voter identity verification scheme for mail ballots. If passed, Question 7 will require voters in Nevada who vote by mail to write the last four digits of either their Nevada driver’s license number or Social Security number, or their county-issued voter identification number, in addition to the signature voters are already legally required to provide to cast a ballot.
There isn’t a single state in the country that conducts all elections by mail, as Nevada does, that requires mail voters to verify their ballots with anything more than a signature. Utah, like Nevada, also conducts its elections primarily by mail — and, like Nevada, Utah solely relies on signature verification to verify mail ballots.
Even among states that only permit certain small elections to be conducted primarily by mail, most still only require a signature. Only three of those states — Alaska, Missouri and New Mexico — require additional verification from mail voters. Of those, only New Mexico requires voters to include the last four digits of their Social Security number in their ballot packet when they mail it back.
There are states that require some of the voter identification verification measures Question 7 asks voters to impose upon themselves. Minnesota, for example, requires mail voters to write their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, just as Question 7 proposes. The majority of Minnesota’s voters, however, vote in person, not by mail. Minnesota also requires voters to apply to receive a mail ballot (Nevada sends mail ballots to all eligible voters) and, unlike Nevada and Utah, does not require signature verification.
In the last two elections, a substantial majority of Nevadans accepted the opportunity to fill out their ballots in the safety, privacy and convenience of their own home. They did so without having to put their identities at risk because Nevada, like many of our neighbors, relies on signature verification — not the sensitive personal identity information used to open a bank account — to safely and securely verify the identities of hundreds of thousands of voters.
Mailing sensitive information to the state to cast a ballot by mail may suit voters in Minnesota. I, however, prefer to follow the wisdom and example of the voters in Utah who quite sensibly don’t accept such risks. Consequently, I will be voting against Question 7.
David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected].
