Clark County officials on Thursday night discovered more than 1,600 ballots that were not originally counted in this month’s election, but the new votes did not change the results of any races.
In a Friday letter sent to Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, the county said the uncounted votes had been stuck in the “duplication stage” of the mail ballot counting process, but had since been counted and were always under county control. The letter said the county “would be conducting a thorough review of the mail ballot duplication process,” and the county said in a statement that it would be issuing an audit along with state election officials.
When asked for more details about why these specific ballots were stuck in the duplication stage, county spokesperson Stephanie Wheatley said the county’s “statement speaks to the facts as we currently know them.”
No election winners changed as a result of the new batch. In the Ward 2 race for North Las Vegas City Council — the closest contest in the county — incumbent Councilwoman Ruth Garcia-Anderson’s nine-vote lead shrunk to eight votes after the latest update.
Still, the discovery of the ballots raises questions about how the most populous county in Nevada counts its ballots, especially because they were uncovered the day before county commissions across the state are meeting to officially certify the election results.
Mail ballots in Clark County can be duplicated by a bipartisan team if they cannot be read by a ballot scanner, either because of physical damage to the ballot or because of how the voter marked the ballot.
Aguilar said in a statement that his office “will work with Clark County to ensure this issue is properly investigated, appropriate accountability measures are taken, and we can be certain that this will not occur in the future.”
In a statement, the Nevada Republican Party also called for “immediate action and full transparency” related to the uncounted votes, saying they raise “serious questions about election integrity and the handling of mail ballots.”
The final day that new votes should have been added to counties’ totals was Tuesday, which was the last day that voters could cure their mail ballots if their signature was found to not match the signature in the state’s voter file (more than 9,000 votes were not counted because voters’ signatures were not cured). Additionally, mail ballots postmarked by Election Day could not be counted if they were received after last Saturday at 5 p.m.
The revelation of the ballots provides a rare case of a public election administration error in Nevada in a year where disinformation surrounding the state’s elections has been significantly lower than in past years.
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, then-President Donald Trump and his allies filed several lawsuits seeking to overturn Nevada’s election results based on debunked accusations of widespread voter fraud. Trump won Nevada’s six electoral votes this year, likely contributing to the lack of post-election uproar and litigation this cycle, even though there was a slew of (unsuccessful) pre-election lawsuits filed by Trump and his GOP allies.
However, there have still been allegations of widespread voter fraud from Robert Beadles, a GOP megadonor based in Northern Nevada who has a history of spreading radical conspiracy theories, ranging from mass irregularities in the 2020 election and that Jews are conspiring to take over the world.
Beadles sent a letter to the Washoe County Clerk on Thursday alleging more than 100 election violations, including a breach of chain of custody and errors with the signature verification process. He has also accused Democrats of rigging the U.S. Senate race against Republican Sam Brown, who conceded the race to Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) last week after losing by about 1.6 percentage points.
Updated on 11/15/24 at 2:40 p.m. to include a statement from the Nevada Republican Party.
