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Trump campaign, GOP lose bid to stop Vegas-area ballot count

Ken Ritter | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 4 months AGO
by Ken Ritter
| November 2, 2020 11:03 AM

LAS VEGAS (AP) — One Nevada judge rejected a bid by President Donald Trump's campaign and state Republicans to stop the count of mail-in ballots in Clark County, while another on Monday began hearing an open-records case filed in the state’s most populous and Democratic-leaning county, including Las Vegas.

The Trump campaign and GOP want the Clark County Registrar of Voters to turn over names of Democratic, Republican and non-partisan ballot workers amid nearly 400,000 mail-in ballots received in Clark County and the campaign and party mulling an appeal in the ballot-counting case.

Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria rejected the request Oct. 21, citing “security reasons.”

He testified before Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez on Monday that officials were concerned that the 300 temporary workers hired for the Nov. 3 election could face pressure or intimidation. He said names could be provided after the election is complete and certified Nov. 16.

Gloria said also that on his request, law enforcers have been following trucks that transport ballots from place to place. The judge did not make an immediate ruling.

Nevada Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to suppress voting in the state’s most diverse area. Clark County, including Las Vegas, is more than 31% Hispanic, 13% Black and about 10% Asian American, according to the U.S. Census.

Democrats point also to an earlier GOP and Trump campaign lawsuit — dismissed by a federal judge in September — that sought to invalidate the state law that enabled universal mail-in voting.

“Trump and his allies are attacking our election processes because they do not want to hear from the hardworking people of our state,” a Democratic party statement said.

In the ballot-count ruling, Judge James Wilson Jr. in Carson City acknowledged the majority-Democratic Legislature reshaped state election law last summer to offer mail balloting to every active registered voter due to the coronavirus pandemic. The law allows challenges of in-person votes, but not of mailed-in ballots.

“There is no evidence that in-person voters are treated differently than mail-in voters,” the judge said. “Nothing the state or Clark County has done values one voter’s vote over another’s.”

Wilson heard a full day of arguments last Wednesday. Attorney Jesse Binnall, representing the Trump campaign and state Republican party, pleaded for “transparency;" cited testimony from count-watchers recruited by the campaign who said ballots were sometimes removed from their view; and asked to stop the count until officials allowed “meaningful” oversight and ballot challenges.

Binnall did not criticize ballot processing in Nevada's other 16 counties where Republicans outnumber Democrats in active voter registration.

Binnall lost bids for a court order to stop use of an optical scanning machine to validate voter signatures; to let the GOP install cameras to monitor counting; and to require that human county employees decide if signatures match, not a machine.

Gloria testified that observers from both major parties and non-partisans are being accommodated in Las Vegas ballot-counting offices. Privacy requirements prevent over-the-shoulder monitoring of signature validation, he said.

He said the signature scanner validates about one in three incoming ballots, letting election workers focus on verifying ballots with illegible signatures and incomplete or confusing marks — sometimes by contacting the voter to determine their intent.

In his ruling, Judge Wilson noted that Washoe County, home to Reno and Sparks, is using county-installed cameras to live-stream the ballot counting process to the public. But he said the law doesn't require such action.

He also noted that no Nevada county hand-counts ballots.

Under pandemic rules, ballots were mailed to all active registered voters in the state. In Clark County, Democrats make up almost 41% of registered active voters and Republicans account for 28.3%.

More than 1.27 million ballots went out in Clark County and more than 398,000 were received as of Monday, state election data said. More than 98% of those were accepted as valid.

Statewide, 1.125 million votes have been cast, including 582,000 by mail and more than 543,000 during early voting, which ended Friday.

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Find AP’s full election coverage at APNews.com/Election2020.

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