Volunteers conducted a first-of-its-kind hand count of mail-in votes for a second day Thursday in a rural Nevada county, while opponents asked the Nevada Supreme Court to halt the process.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada filed an emergency request for action Thursday accusing Nye County officials of violating a Supreme Court order issued last week that requires the count to be conducted in a way that prevents public release of early results before polls close to in-person voting on Nov. 8.
The ACLU argued that reading candidates’ names aloud from ballots within hearing distance of public observers violates the court rule.
Attorneys for Nye County responded in a court filing saying that the ACLU is engaging in “political stunts and ‘gotcha’ games.” It asked the court to distinguish between observers verbally describing the “vote count” and observers learning the “election results.”
The state high court did not immediately act.
Nye County spokesman Arnold Knightly said counting was scheduled to continue Friday.
On the first day of counting Wednesday, observers, including some from the ACLU, watched as volunteers were sworn in and split into groups in six different rooms at a Nye County office building in Pahrump, 60 miles west of Las Vegas.
In a filing last week, the ACLU sought to block hand-counting before Election Day, saying it threatened to reveal election results before most voters could even weigh in. While the state Supreme Court allowed the count to go ahead, it blocked a plan to livestream the counting, ruling that video can only be released only after polls close Nov. 8.
Rules set by the secretary of state’s office said Nye County had to split teams into separate rooms so anyone observing the count of early in-person and mailed ballots would not know the “totality of returns.” Participants were not identified for the media.
The secretary of state’s office also previously spelled out rules that required that the teams of counters be bipartisan.
Observers were required to sign a form saying they won’t release results they overhear, under penalty of possible misdemeanor prosecution.
Nye County is home to about 50,000 residents, including 33,000 registered voters.
Nevada has one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races in the country, as well as high-stakes contests for governor and the office that oversees elections. Depending on their home location, Nye County voters can have more than 20 ballot choices. The county reported receiving nearly 4,700 ballots as of Wednesday.
Nye County commissioners voted to hand-count all ballots after complaints by residents about ‘rigged’ voting machines and assertations that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Nye is the most prominent county in the U.S. to change its vote-counting process
The Republican nominee for secretary of state, Jim Marchant, has agreed that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election and said he wants to spread hand-counting to every Nevada county. In March, he said he would try to have the state’s 15 rural counties adopt hand-counting, then “force Clark and Washoe” — home to Las Vegas and Reno — to do the same.
