KVIG Informative

Nevada election law now treats a polling place and a ballot drop box on Tribal land as the default rather than a favor a Tribe must ask for. Here is how the rule works, how it changed and who at the state handles it.

The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office announced Nov. 6, 2026, that Margaret Scharmann, who is Yaqui and Hopi, has joined the office as its Tribal liaison. The office said her role includes supporting access to voting information and services and making sure Tribal community perspectives shape its outreach.

According to the office, Scharmann previously co-led a school district’s federal Title VI program for Native students and worked with the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe’s Community Learning Center. Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said the office wants to strengthen its relationships with Nevada’s Tribal nations on voting access, economic development and consumer protection.

The position rests on state law. NRS 233A.260 requires every state agency that communicates regularly with Tribes to name a Tribal liaison who reports directly to the agency head. Nevada’s election statutes also give the Secretary of State’s liaison a specific job, which comes into play when a Tribe decides how voting will work on its land.

From request to default The Legislature first wrote Tribal polling places into election law in 2017, with amendments in 2019, 2021 and 2023. Under the earlier version, a Tribe had to file a request with the county clerk. If the request met the clerk’s standards, the clerk had to open at least one Election Day polling place inside the reservation or colony. For early voting, the clerk could decline a site on Tribal land if the clerk found it was not logistically feasible.

The 2023 changes, carried in Senate Bill 327 according to the Secretary of State’s Tribal request form, flipped that arrangement. Under NRS 293.2733 and NRS 293.3572 as amended, a county clerk must provide a polling place and a ballot drop box within a reservation or colony at a location the Tribe approves, and must keep providing them in later elections. A Tribe that does not want them files a notice opting out by deadlines set in the statutes, and a Tribe can ask for additional sites. The opt-out notice goes to both the county clerk and the Secretary of State’s Tribal liaison.

The paperwork The Secretary of State publishes a form, EL900, that Tribes use to request polling locations or to opt out. The Tribal chair signs it, and it goes to the county clerk or registrar. The form says any proposed site must meet the same criteria the county uses for other polling places, and it asks Tribes to make sure enough Tribal personnel are identified to staff the location.

Other parts of the election code reach Tribal governments too. Chapter 293 includes a section on meetings between election officials and Tribes that covers deadlines and the recruitment of poll workers. Another section allows an agency of a Tribe to serve as an automatic voter registration agency under certain conditions. City elections follow a parallel statute, NRS 293C.2675, which applies where a colony sits inside city limits, as the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe’s colony does near downtown Las Vegas.

Distance explains why lawmakers focused on location. Many of Nevada’s reservations and colonies sit far from a county seat. The Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe’s reservation straddles the Oregon line, and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation sit about 100 miles north of Elko, according to the state’s Tribal directory.

The Nov. 3, 2026, general election ran under the 2023 rules. County clerks report data on their election processes to the Secretary of State, and the full statute text is posted on the Nevada Legislature’s website. With a new Tribal liaison in place and the Legislature returning in February 2027, the next questions are practical ones: which Tribes kept their sites, which opted out and whether staffing on Tribal land keeps pace with the law.