KVIG Informative

Nevada’s active voter rolls shrank by nearly 100,000 people in a single month. Election officials say it’s routine maintenance. With a midterm election approaching, critics aren’t so sure.

Nevada ended March 2026 with 2,040,752 active registered voters — a drop of 99,628 from February, according to data released this week by Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar. That’s a decline of 4.66 percent in a single month, the result of a large-scale voter list maintenance effort carried out primarily by the Clark County Election Department.

Clark County sent notices to 117,650 voters and subsequently inactivated approximately 104,945 of them after they did not respond. Under Nevada law, voters who fail to respond to maintenance notices and who haven’t voted or updated their registration through two consecutive federal election cycles can eventually be removed from the rolls entirely. Inactivation is a precursor step — inactivated voters can still vote but must take additional steps at the polls to do so.

The decline cut across every party. Nonpartisan voters dropped by 36,904. Democrats lost 30,179 active registrations. Republicans lost 24,261. The Independent American Party fell by 5,145 and Libertarian registrations declined by 939. No single party was disproportionately targeted, according to the secretary of state’s data.

State officials have framed the effort as a necessary and legally required step before the 2026 election cycle. The National Voter Registration Act requires states to maintain accurate voter rolls and prohibits routine maintenance within 90 days of a federal election — a period known as the quiet period, which began March 11 for Nevada’s 2026 primary. The Clark County cleanup was completed just before that window closed.

But the timing and scale have drawn scrutiny. Nevada is a perennial battleground state. A swing of 100,000 voters — even temporarily inactivated ones — carries real consequences if affected voters don’t realize their status has changed before they show up to cast a ballot. Civil rights organizations have raised concerns nationally about voter roll purges being used to suppress participation, particularly in communities of color and among lower-income voters who are less likely to respond to mailed notices.

Secretary Aguilar has encouraged voters to check their registration status at VOTE.NV.gov and to update their information to avoid being flagged in future maintenance cycles. The secretary of state’s office also recommends that voters provide a phone number or email address so election officials can reach them through additional channels. With Nevada’s primary approaching and a competitive midterm election on the horizon, the window for affected voters to restore their active status is narrowing.