Trump’s falsehoods about mail voting in Nevada, fact-checked

President Donald Trump made a series of false attacks on voting by mail at a Nevada rally, wrongly suggesting that Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, is in charge of millions of mail ballots and can "rig" the election.

In broad attacks on voting by mail, Trump falsely suggested that mail ballots will only be sent to Democrats. Dead people and dogs will also receive ballots, he said, without providing any details. 

Nevada media outlets reported that thousands of Trump supporters gathered for his outdoor rally Sept. 12 at the Minden-Tahoe Airport, despite state rules limiting gatherings to no more than 50 people. Many in the audience did not wear masks or social distance. Trump was scheduled to hold a rally in Las Vegas on Sept. 13.

We sent emails to the Trump campaign asking for evidence to support his statements about voting by mail in Nevada and did not get a reply by deadline.

Here’s a look at six of Trump’s false or misleading claims about voting in Nevada:

Trump is wrong about Sisolak’s role in handling mailed ballots. Local elections officials will handle them. Trump also exaggerated the number of Nevada voters.

County election officials will send ballots to every active voter as part of a law passed by the State Assembly. The Trump campaign filed a lawsuit in August challenging AB4.

Sisolak signed the bill in August and rejected a request from Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske to require individuals who return 10 or more ballots on behalf of others to provide their name and political associations. Cegavske, a Republican, opposed AB4.

Nevada has about 1.7 million active voters. (The number will likely be higher by the election.) 

The idea that Sisolak could "rig" the election in Nevada is wrong.

The day-to-day tasks of operating an election are in the hands of county officials, not the governor. County election officials send out ballots, recruit poll workers and operate in-person voting sites. The secretary of state supervises state and local elections and certifies election results. 

The secretary of state’s office warned that if results change after Election Day, it does not mean there was fraud or malfeasance. The counting of ballots must be done by the ninth day following the election, and county officials have 13 days to certify results.

RELATED: Be patient on election night 2020: Counting the returns will take time

Pants on Fire! Trump is an incumbent facing several ongoing challenges: a major pandemic, high unemployment, civic unrest and future uncertainty. Those are significant political hurdles that would be challenging for any president. 

A conspiracy to rig the results of a national election would require hundreds or thousands of people working together to commit felonies across many jurisdictions. Experts do not consider this feasible, nor do we.

Trump falsely suggests that mail ballots will be sent only to Democrats. 

Nationwide, ballots will be sent to voters who are Democrats, Republicans, other parties or independents. (Here’s the breakdown of the party affiliation of active registered voters in Nevada.) Ballots will be sent in states that have historically sent ballots to all voters for many years predating COVID-19. Some states, including Nevada, decided to send out ballots to all voters this year to reduce the number of voters gathering indoors at voting sites. 

Trump’s number of 80 million ballots is likely based on an estimate from the New York Times in August for ballots cast by mail in November.

This is wrong. According to the secretary of state’s "facts vs myths" for the 2020 general election: "Signature verification is performed on every ballot received. If the signature is missing or if the signature on the ballot return envelope does not match the signature on file for the voter, the ballot will not be counted until the voter verifies their signature."

If there is a problem with the signature or its missing, county election officials reach out to voters to offer an opportunity to correct the ballot.

We recently fact-checked a misleading claim on Facebook that 200,000 ballots were sent to dead people and pets in Nevada. Around 226,000 ballots for the June 9 primary were returned to Clark County because the voters no longer lived at the address. That doesn’t prove they were all dead; it’s likely many of them moved since they registered to vote.

The fact that the ballots were returned to the elections office is not evidence of fraud. In fact, it is a sign that the system worked. Postal workers are not allowed to forward ballots if voters have a forwarding address — they are required to return them. County election officials regularly receive data about deaths that they use to remove dead voters from registration lists.

What about ballots being sent to dogs? 

There have been instances of third-party groups, which use commercial mail lists, of erroneously sending voter registration materials to pets. If people put their pets’ names on various mailing lists, it is possible that their pets will wind up with election-related mail. But we’ve never met a dog or cat that is capable of registering to vote and casting a ballot on their own, so if that were to happen, it would be fraud on the part of a human being.

That’s what happened in 2006 in Washington state when Jane Balogh fraudulently registered Duncan, her Australian shepherd terrier-mix. Balogh returned the ballot in her dog’s name with an image of a paw print for the signature and wrote "void" on the ballot. Balogh said she did it in an effort to point out flaws in the voter registration system. Balogh took a plea deal and agreed to perform community service and pay a fine. Criminal charges were later dropped.

The dog was removed from the voter roll.