Nevada law permits mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they are received by 5 p.m. on the Saturday following Election Day. Ballots with an unclear or missing postmark will also be counted if received before 5 p.m. on the Friday after Election Day. These rules underpin the state's election procedures and have been a point of discussion regarding election integrity.
The acceptance of ballots after Election Day is often cited in claims that Nevada's elections are "rigged." For example, two days after Election Day in 2022, Donald Trump stated that final results were unknown because the state wanted "more time to cheat." Jim Marchant, the Republican nominee for secretary of state in 2022 and again this year, attributed his loss to "cheating," noting that he had been ahead at an earlier point during ballot counting.
The current ballot acceptance rules followed the passage of a wide-ranging 2021 state law. This legislation, which faced staunch opposition from Republicans, made permanent the expansion of mail voting that was initially introduced during the pandemic. The 2021 bill also shortened the timeframe for post-Election Day ballot receipt compared to the 2020 election, when ballots postmarked by Election Day could count if received within a week; the new law reduced this period to four days.
Legal challenges to these rules have not been successful. During the 2024 election cycle, Republicans lost state and federal lawsuits that sought to end post-Election Day ballot counting. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that counting ballots after Election Day was legal in a case concerning a similar law in Mississippi.
While the practice can impact close races, the number of ballots arriving after Election Day constitutes a small percentage of overall votes. In the 2024 general election, approximately 9,500 Clark County ballots and 2,400 Washoe County ballots were received post-Election Day. These numbers represented less than 1 percent of all ballots cast in the two counties combined. In the 2022 general election, the proportion was higher, with about 40,000 Clark County ballots and 5,700 Washoe County votes received after Election Day. This accounted for 5.8 percent of all ballots received in Clark County and 2.9 percent in Washoe County.
The acceptance of ballots beyond Election Day inevitably extends the period required for the public to receive a full picture of Nevada's election results. However, delays in results do not always indicate that ballots were returned after Election Day. For instance, in the 2024 general election, the results of 54,000 Clark County ballots that were dropped off on Election Day were not released until the following day. This situation, which frustrated Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, involved more than five times as many ballots as those actually received after Election Day.
Other factors also contribute to delays in initial election night results. A state law prohibits election officials from releasing any results until the final person in line at an Election Day polling site has voted. Consequently, during the 2024 general election, the first results were posted at approximately 10 p.m.
Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar has also sought legislative changes to address election administration. During the 2025 legislative session, Aguilar proposed a bill aimed at providing local election offices with additional resources. He also supported a separate proposal to increase ballot drop box capacity before Election Day. However, Governor Joe Lombardo vetoed both of these proposals. Governor Lombardo stated that the first bill "centralizes too much authority" in the secretary of state's office, and he indicated that the latter proposal did not include sufficient security measures for the drop boxes.
Despite Republican efforts to alter the ballot acceptance rules, there are no current indications that Democrats, who hold control of the state Legislature, are interested in changing these laws. In the 2023 legislative session, Governor Lombardo proposed a bill that would have mandated all mail ballots be received by the close of polls on Election Day, but it never advanced to a hearing. Similarly, ahead of the 2025 session, Senator Lisa Krasner (R-Reno) sponsored a bill that would have required all ballots mailed to an election clerk to be postmarked by the end of early voting and received before polls closed on Election Day; this bill also never received a hearing. Governor Lombardo had also stated, ahead of the 2025 session, that he would consider a ballot initiative on the topic if the Legislature did not change the acceptance rules, but this initiative "never materialized."
