On May 22, 2025, Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) vetoed AB 306, a bill that would have increased the availability of mail ballot drop boxes and added new security requirements for maintaining them.
Under current law, county clerks must make a ballot drop box available at every polling location while that polling place is open, including early voting locations. AB 306 would have required clerks to establish drop boxes that are available for use between the end of early voting and the day before Election Day.
The bill would have tied the number of drop boxes to county population, requiring at least 10 drop boxes in counties with more than 700,000 people and at least five in counties with more than 100,000. In counties with a population of less than 100,000, it would have given clerks discretion to decide the number and hours of drop box availability.
It also would have required clerks to monitor all drop boxes while they are available for use, and to secure them while not in use, tasking the secretary of state with establishing rules to conform with those requirements.
The Democratic-sponsored legislation passed the Nevada Legislature largely along party lines. One Republican in the Nevada State Assembly voted for the bill.
Supporters of the bill said that it was meant to provide more options for voters and to create quicker election results by alleviating the administrative burden of processing mail ballots on Election Day. Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar (D) attributed slow results after the 2024 general election to the number of ballots returned to drop boxes on Election Day. Mail ballots require additional administrative action before they are counted in comparison to in-person voted ballots, meaning that a significant number of mail ballots requiring processing on or after Election Day may delay results.
In 2020, Nevada lawmakers adopted new rules allowing election administrators to process and count mail ballots during the two weeks before Election Day. But, in 2024, a majority of the 67,397 ballots returned on Election Day in Clark County — Nevada’s largest county by population — were deposited in a drop box. Nevada is one of ten states that explicitly allow election officials to process mail ballots at least two weeks before a general election or primary.
Speaker of the Assembly Steve Yeager (D) said the bill, “aimed at ensuring that voters, especially working families, seniors, and those with disabilities, have secure and accessible ways to return their mail ballots between the end of early voting and election day, allowing election workers to count votes quicker.”
In his veto message, Lombardo said that the bill didn’t do enough to improve security or provide quicker election results. He wrote, “AB 306 appears to be well-intentioned but falls short of its stated goals while failing to guarantee appropriate oversight of the proposed ballot boxes or the ballots cast. I believe additional election reforms should be considered as part of a larger effort to improve election security, integrity and allow Nevada to declare winners more quickly.”
Nevada has a divided government and is an all-mail voting state where elections are conducted primarily by mail. Twenty-eight states explicitly permit voters to return voted ballots to a drop box, while 12 states either explicitly prohibit them or do not include them as a valid means to return a ballot. Of those 12 states, all but one — North Carolina, which does not list drop boxes as an approved return method — has a Republican trifecta in control of state government.
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