Nevada had a new voting block this election.

People who are in jail in 2019.

Assembly Bill 431 made it so that Nevada residents who have been released from prison will have their voting rights restored.

But it did not address the thousands of inmates who have not been convicted and are awaiting trial in jail.

That's where Assembly Bill 286 comes in.

It passed with wide bipartisan support last legislative session and was put to the test for the first time this year.

It requires jails in Nevada to establish a policy ensuring that detainees can vote and register to vote.

And on Election day, Nevada Week visited the Clark County Detention Center to see its policy in action.

Of the three inmates that Nevada Week interviewed, one said they voted for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Different programs she's going to introduce, like the, homeowner homeowners program, like for for first time homeowners and stuff like that, like some of the stuff she talks about, she seems like it's just going to be beneficial for a lot of people.

So and two said they voted for former President Donald Trump.

I like the way he is, the way his demeanor is like he doesn't take crap from nobody.

You know what I mean?

I was like, he's very strong, very firm.

You know, like I really like that about him.

He's also a businessman.

He knows what his country needs and at the same time can be the Harris also has good views.

So I wouldn't be unwise to to bash either one of them.

But at the same time, when I come down to it, it's, it's, to vote.

What really matters more for this country and this country, I think need is, is a hard, swift change.

Voting is a constitutional right that inmates at the Clark County Detention Center can now exercise in person.

Here, inmates are voting electronically.

There are two voting booths inside, one holding cell.

And this is also where inmates can register to vote.

So we first got the bill passed AB 286.

We looked at what was our options to get people to vote.

We looked at can we take them to a polling facility?

Obviously, there's a lot of security risks when we talk about taking a bunch of people that are in custody and taking them out into public to vote.

So we said, that's probably not going to be the best solution for us.

And we start to look internally because we're the biggest facility we so I think we can do this here.

Deputy Chief Fred Haas oversees the Clark County Detention Center.

Most of the people that are here are pretrial detainees.

They have not been convicted of a crime.

They are here because they're awaiting trial to go through that process.

So just because you're awaiting trial doesn't mean you're guilty of those crimes.

And by that, you still have the ability to vote.

And we it's been very hard in the past for inmates to have that ability to vote.

It was all done by mail or by paper to get to the request.

However, in-person voting is not a requirement of AB 286 as its sponsor, Assemblywoman Brittany Miller.

First and foremost, the purpose was to enable people that are detained in jail to vote.

And so the different options and styles and ways that can go about are flexible.

As long as the goal was met, which enabled people to vote in jail.

Her bill received bipartisan support before Republican governor and former Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo signed it into law.

You know, our governor absolutely has a background in law enforcement.

And so I think there was that perception that because of his background, that he would be against a bill like this or against individuals in jail voting.

And and instead, it was quite the contrary.

Ken Gray is one of the three Assembly members who voted against the bill.

In an email, he said in part that AB 286 would place an undue strain on our county and city jails, which already face financial constraints.

He added that voting areas in jails introduce potential risks that would compromise the safety of staff and detainees.

Deputy chief has acknowledged the bill does include an unfunded mandate.

Has it had a fiscal impact on you?

So when we look at the presidential primary election, are over time, costs were about $8,500.

So it's not I mean, it's it's a lot of money, but we had a lot of people were able to vote because of that.

Now, as you look into this, I don't know what my costs are going to be because we had an early voting day and then we actually had Election day today.

It's going on right now, and transfer a section of our facility.

So for those who say, gosh, jails are already burdened by staffing shortages, not having enough money.

And then this comes along.

What would you say?

Elections are a constitutional right and we're going to protect those rights.

In his email, gray also said that in a jail environment, detainees could face pressure, intimidation and influence from other inmates, which could impact how they vote.

No, no, no, we get to vote our own way.

And whether they like it or not, we can vote now.

You know what I'm saying?

Definitely a moment to kind of be proud of, if you will get to.

Chambers testified in support of AB 286.

He's the co-director of Mass Liberation Project Nevada, a nonprofit dedicated to ending mass incarceration.

After serving time in Florida, he moved to Nevada, where he first fought for the passage of AB 431, in 2019.

That bill allowed the voting rights of Nevada residents to be restored upon their release from prison.

I was a senior in college, on spring break, out partying way too hard with some of my friends and got into a physical altercation.

I felt I didn't initiate the instant, but again went to trial.

Actually lost at trial.

Was found guilty of second degree attempted murder.

I was incarcerated for over 2000 days, since to nearly six years in prison.

So, as a violent offender, in Florida is where I was at in spring break.

I had nullified my right to vote for life.

Whatever state you live in is.

That's what's governing you.

So as a Nevada resident, it was it was like a no brainer.

I knew how important it was.

So I was allowed, comfortable enough to let my voice be.

Inmates at the Clark County Detention Center are now making their voices heard through their vote.

A lot of us inmates, we got together and we were like, yeah, let's do it.

Let's go vote.

You know what I mean?

Those guys, they said that there was going to be a couple of judges on the ballot.

That was cool ones, you know, I mean, the firm ones, you know.

So we were like, let's do it.

Although inmates told us no political campaigns reached out to them, chambers thinks that'll change.

There's always 3000 folks sitting still in that detention center.

So it's a missed opportunity.

As more lawmakers know about the thousands of votes they can earn.

So it was great.

You know, it feels great.

I'm happy to be able to vote now from behind the bars of Nevada's jails.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there are about 7900 people in jail in Nevada.

So who's making sure that they are able to vote?

It's a task that the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has taken on.

And a Tallahassee Bola, the executive director of the civil rights organization, joins us now.

Tara, you had told me that it was during the presidential preference primary.

Your organization discovered that not a single Nevada jail was in full compliance with this bill.

So what did you do?

Yeah.

That's right.

First and foremost, thanks for having me on.

We're always grateful to be able to talk about these constitutional rights that are impacting Nevadans.

That's what our organization's focused on and that's what we're committed to doing.

We were involved with this bill since inception.

We hope, right.

Parts of it certainly lobby it.

And so it's important for us to see it to fruition.

We came to learn that, every jail in Nevada was not compliant because we put in public records, requests to every entity.

Right around the time of the presidential preference primaries, some, jails had some level of compliance.

Some jails simply did not, one county had responded to us and said they were monitoring, we didn't know what that meant because it's not the bill didn't call for monitoring.

It said you have to establish a process and procedure for people who are in jail to be able to vote.

And again, as we we share people who are in jail have not forfeited their constitutional rights.

These are people who are generally there pre adjudication.

And so they're being held and constructively denied there.

Right after we put in those public records request, we ended up having, an interim hearing for the Legislative Operations Committee.

At that hearing, which was done at the end of March, we said that every jail in Nevada would have until April 15th to comply.

And if not, we sue them.

And as you know, and I've shared on this program before, if we say we're going to sue on something, we sue, which we did.

And, we initially sent out a demand letter to each of these jails.

Almost all the jails immediately responded and said, we're happy to work with you.

A couple did not.

An example was Elko and Elko County.

There was no response whatsoever.

We ended up filing a lawsuit against them.

They quickly reached back out, asked us what they could do to comply.

And we effectively helped draft their policy for them.

And as a result, they came into compliance.

We work directly with the other jails, including the Clark County Detention Center, to make sure that they were in compliance.

And they were.

And to their credit, Lmpd, which administers, the Clark County Detention Center, they're the administrator for it.

It's a lot of people don't know about.

They think it might be two separate entities.

It's not June.

They had a successful primary and, just a couple days ago, they served as a polling site as well for people who were in jail there and had a slew of voters cast their vote.

Yeah.

And the detention center told us that 215 inmates, they transported 215 inmates on election day to that polling site.

They don't keep track of how many actually vote, but that's how many at least they took their to vote.

Your level of confidence ahead of this general election that in Nevada's jails, about whether or not they would comply was was rather high.

One of the things that we'll do it on the back end is monitor compliance, back end to see if there's anything technically that needs to be fixed.

I know there were concerns we heard about, well, what happens if there are forcing people in jails to vote a specific way?

Well, you can't do that because in Nevada, one of the other things that the ACLU helped do was get body universal body camera footage passed.

And so those folks have body cameras on when they're in there.

So we'll be able to review that footage and see what happened.

We'll also be able to assess the full numbers on the back end of this as time progresses.

People that actually, either use the process that was in DC, the Clark County Detention Center, or in other communities, what that process ended up looking like it.

If there were any complaints that were lodged about folks inability to vote.

Now, one thing I think that is notable as well, as we heard some complaints on the front end, including from a couple of the members, I think there were three members of the legislature that voted against this.

For whatever reason, they claim to be pro constitution.

I said, if you're pro constitution, you'd be pro voting here.

Anybody has and forfeited that right.

One of the things that we heard, consistently shared there was effectively that this was going to end up being a Partizan vote.

And as we've seen, it's not Partizan.

There's a misconception there, right?

Because we interviewed two inmates that voted for Trump, one for Kamala Harris, at some of their complaints, though, specifically Ken Gray, the assemblyman, he also wrote that there's a report that each jail is required to submit to the secretary of state after each election, and he thinks that gives an undue administrative burden, unnecessary administrative burden to these jail administrators.

He also talked about staffing shortages at rural jails and, you know, safely implementing voting facilities within those jails is going to require more staff.

So how would you respond to each of those?

What are some of the methods that these rural jails have used?

Look, Assemblyman Graves, a government official, I worked for the government one point.

I don't know that many people in government that would say that any requirements for work aren't an undue burden, right?

So for him, if completing a report is an undue burden, it's the same thing that every other government official would have to do.

It's an accountability piece.

I'm not of the belief and neither is my organization or any of our supporters, that you should just take the government at their word.

That includes law enforcement.

That includes the Assembly, that includes the Senate, that includes Congress and everybody else.

We need to make sure that there's a record, a report of what happened, and we'll be able to verify what happens within that report against the outcomes from the notion that somehow it's an undue burden.

I don't know what wouldn't be considered an undue burden.

It's not there's not staffing shortages, in my opinion, that prevent them from doing this, because this would really be an administrative function.

This is one report.

We're not asking them to go out and spend 18 years tracking materials.

Certainly, they're able to generate this report pretty quickly.

It's pretty disappointing for a government official to say they don't care about accountability in that way.

And we should just accept the word, of administrators in order to see how this process unfolds.

And it's one thing to implement a polling site at a jail, but that is not a requirement of this bill, and it allows for flexibility.

And I'm wondering then, what did some of the rural jails do in order to be in compliance?

The most common practice that some of them would adopt is to be able to have their, have detainees there request a mail ballot and complete that ballot and have that submitted.

And the reason why that came about, I'll tell you on my end, the initial push was to use the EAS system, which I think more to that the voters should care about and learn about, especially if we're trying to expedite timelines, military members, a broader using IT service members that are in the Foreign Service that are diplomats right now are using it.

People with disabilities can use it in tribal members can use it.

It's an online voting system, safe and secure.

Nobody's really complained about military members being able to use this.

And, we thought that this might be an option, for people who are in rural jails as well.

The response we received was there.

WI fi, internet connections and connectivity may not be as good, so we didn't want to be overly prescriptive, didn't have, have effectively a challenge that didn't need to exist.

Instead, we realized we can provide some level of flexibility, and we chose to view this as a a glass half full type of approach instead of a glass half empty.

We think that there's obviously ways to build upon this in the future, but it's a pretty darn good bill right now.

The final version of this bill does not mention poll watchers and how they are dealt with or allowed inside of jails.

Your organization just had about 500 poll watchers around the state for this election, so you know how important they are.

I would think the fact that there are no guidelines for them in this legislation would be of concern to you.

You're not really in here.

And here's why.

There's a couple reasons.

Number one, if people are submitting a mail ballot, right.

We don't there's nothing to necessarily observe there.

The observation process happens when someone's casting a vote in person.

So, we wrote part of the observer statutes within Senate Bill 406 this past legislative session.

We're able to request body camera footage on the back end.

Polling places and jails are unique, actually.

And from a First Amendment standpoint where this really emanates from, you have limited restrictions there request footage on the back end and go from there.

A Tallahassee Bullet.

Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

And thank you for watching.