Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
New registrar of voters brings experience and insight to post
Lorena Portillo remembers a time when she worked in the Clark County Elections Department and had two phones, one she answered in English and another in Spanish.
In 2000, under former Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax, Portillo helped helm the county’s Spanish-language voter outreach program that was later used as the model for its sibling program for Tagalog-speaking Filipinos.
Portillo, who on Monday officially took over for Joe Gloria as registrar of voters for Clark County after his 10 years of service, is the first woman of color to hold this position. She is armed with 25 years of experience to bring more voter education and voter accessibility to the county.
“It’s a partnership. We rely on the community to better serve them, and so therefore, we like to continue to do that,” Portillo said. “That is a huge goal that I continue to have.”
The Sun sat down with Portillo to discuss her new role, tackling election misinformation and voting in minority communities.
Are there any projects or changes you’d like to institute right away?
We have the Henderson Ward 1 special election that is taking up our time, but we’re conducting it along with the city of Henderson. But most important: the 2024 election. We are already beginning the prep work and planning polling place sites. We are looking at what to do in less than a year, so we are looking at what plan we have on hiring temporary staff, which will begin earlier this year because we have the presidential preference primary Feb. 6, and early voting begins in January. The planning stages are much sooner than normal before a presidential election, because now we have three elections — the presidential preference primary, regular primary and a general election — that we’re preparing for, so we have our plate very full.
However, we are also innovating. We are looking into implementing a new voter registration system, which we’re very excited about. We will be working with the secretary of state on the Top-down System, which is a statewide effort. We definitely have lots to do still before the big election is here.
Tell us about the new voting system.
In a general overview, it’ll give us new and more standardized reporting, and that is very important in our processes. In a statewide voter registration system, we’re able to share the data. There’ll be more real-time data available, which is very important in everything we do, including the election night results.
Why will that information-sharing system specifical
ly be helpful, especially for the state in regard to the real-time data?
We share information during election cycles, so we want to know who’s registered where or if someone sent in the mail ballot rather than voting in person. We do checks and balances that — right now — we handle in a manual way. We can probably get that in real time with a statewide system.
You are the first woman of color to hold this position and you’ve done a lot of work with marginalized communities to increase voter access. There are many barriers for certain marginalized communities, so how do you plan on integrating your experience with marginalized communities into this new role?
We will continue to work with the Filipino community, the Latino community and most importantly, any other language-based community that we are required to help and run our elections in. In any other language, we are willing to work with that community, but overall, the entire community that is in Clark County, we have a great responsibility that we oversee. I began the process of working with the Latino community back in 2000, and so that’s something that we’ve developed. That same program was implemented when the Tagalog language became part of our required languages.
How do you plan to address the safety concerns of election workers in the wake of the threats posed by right-wing extremists the past two election cycles?
We have a very close relationship with law enforcement, and that includes cybersecurity threats. We, on a yearly basis, meet with them and whenever it is necessary. You want to make sure our voters, but also our staff, feels safe and secure about their physical safety and also the processes of voting. So we make sure to work in collaboration with all law enforcement.
What can you do to assure those who earnestly believe in election fraud conspiracies that the elections are, in fact, free and fair? Is that even possible?
It’s important that our Clark County voters understand the process, because if they have a question, we want to be there to answer their question. We hope to be able to implement a good voter outreach plan and a good voter education plan for the upcoming year because the presidential preference primary. It’s new to Clark County and the state of Nevada. Therefore, a lot of voter education efforts need to be made soon, so we are working on that right now.
We’d love to invite voters to come in and observe. We do have a very extensive observation program. We love to work with the community one-on-one and answer their questions on the spot. We hire ambassadors to help us with that program, and we give them training beforehand to make sure they understand the protocols here in the office before they actually enter the different areas where we verify the signatures and where we tabulate.
We do things right here. I believe, through the 25 years I’ve been here, we’ve always worked on our mission to extend voter accessibility and run honest elections. That has always been part of our mission, and that’s why I love working here. Nevada has implemented laws to definitely help us in the processes that we do and help the voters have the right to vote.
And do you have any details on
the voter outreach and education plans that you’re able to share?
They’re still in the planning stages. As soon as they are, I would love to share that.
How difficult would it be for a person to vote illegally in Nevada? Does widespread mailin balloting open the elections up to fraud?
We definitely have strict rules and laws that we have to abide by in each voting process — in-person voting and mail ballot voting — so we make sure that we abide by each and every law that we administer.
I don’t see how mail-ballot fraud could happen with all the processes we have in place, all the laws that we have in place and the checks and balances. We don’t just accept any mail ballot; we have to go through the signature verification process and check the voter record. So there’s different steps that we have to take to ensure that each ballot and each envelope that we receive with that signature is properly verified.
And that is something your election team is trained on verifying?
We train our staff accordingly and extensively. We have a lot of very high-skilled professionals that have been here for a very long time, so we definitely pride ourselves in administering the law correctly not only for mail ballots, but also for in-person.
We have different laws that we have to manage accordingly and make sure that the process is handled by everyone in our staff — all the leaders in our staff and the part-time hourly workers. So it’s extensive training during early voting and on Election Day, but also prior to that. We definitely have a large staff, and it grows to over 3,500 with the Election Day staff. We have in-house staff, early voting staff and Election Day staff. It’s important that the training is very well administered.
Apart from Joe Gloria, who is a person you admire professionally?
In 25 years, you work with excellent professionals; you work with election professionals, county managers and fellow staff members that also teach you so much about their expertise in the different divisions that we have. It’s hard to say and pinpoint just one person, but Joe Gloria definitely has left a trajectory of leadership here that we will forever be grateful for.
Larry Lomax, as well. I worked with him and he showed us many, many ways to better the election process and why we do things as precisely as we can. And, of course, Katherine Ferguson brought in early voting, and it still stays. Till this day, early voting is a popular voting method for all Clark County voters.
What’s one aspect of election administration that you wish more people understood?
Their actual participation. We want to make sure the voters understand that this is their process, and we’re here to help them with that process, and if they have any questions, they can reach out to us.
If they have a question — “Do I have to register again?” or “Do I have to register before every election?” — feel free to ask. We have a website that has a wealth of knowledge that maybe voters don’t know about and we’d love to share that information.
What is your job like in the “offseason?” What are you doing when there isn’t an election coming up in a few months?
It’s tremendously busy, even on “off years” because we are vigorously working on our systems and testing and certifying our equipment and software — making any innovations we can do before the next election. We are racing to the deadlines and making sure we get those done in an orderly fashion, but also training our staff.
We want to make sure we have staff training and professional development during these months. It is a few months before the first temporary crew comes on board in July, and so we want to make sure our systems are complete and our staff is trained. It’s definitely something that doesn’t give us as much time as one might think. We have the legislative session and we want to provide all the information as quickly as possible about our processes, which are most of the questions we receive. It’s definitely a race to the finish.
How do you feel knowing that you can inspire younger women, especially women of color, who might not even think of themselves having a job like this, but now can see themselves through your representation?
I feel very extremely honored that anyone can see me as an inspiration, but I do want to let everyone know that if you have a strong work ethic, you believe in what you do, and you hold the integrity of the process that you do to a very high standard, this is what it requires here.
And I think it can be taken anywhere, any career that anyone would aspire to.
Go as far as you want in your career and keep those work ethics strong and I’m sure anyone can succeed.