Banners are stored at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas Thursday, May 26, 2022.
Published Thursday, June 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Updated 4 hours, 7 minutes ago
Unfounded claims of election fraud, fueled by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters after his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, have become a rallying cry for some Republicans.
Many Nevada Republicans cried foul and touted claims that the election was stolen and that mail-in ballots were submitted fraudulently, but Nevada election officials say they spent more than 125 hours thoroughly investigating GOP claims and found no evidence to support widespread fraud.
“While the NVGOP raises policy concerns about the integrity of mail-in voting, automatic voter registration and same-day voter registration,” wrote Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, who is termed limited this year, in a 2021 letter to the Nevada Republican Party about her office’s investigation, “these concerns do not amount to evidentiary support for the contention that the 2020 general election was plagued by widespread voter fraud.”
Despite court rulings that there was insufficient evidence of fraud, and despite Cegavske’s conclusion of the investigation, most of the Republicans running for her secretary of state post continue to claim the 2020 election in Nevada was fraudulent.
And many of the seven Republican candidates on the June 14 primary ballot would seek to significantly roll back voting laws that were passed in the last Legislature that made it easier to vote. They are vying to face Cisco Aguilar, an attorney and founder of a sports technology company called Blueprint Sports who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary.
The secretary of state in Nevada is responsible for supervising state and local elections. The office maintains the official records of the Nevada Legislature’s acts, and it registers and files candidate contribution and expenditure reports.
The office also registers corporations and trademarks, regulates the state’s securities industry, and serves on the state’s Board of Prison Commissioners, Board of Examiners, the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency Governing Board, the Executive Branch Audit Committee and the Records Committee.
In the Republican primary, candidates John Cardiff Gerhardt, Kristopher Dahir, Jesse Haw, Socorro Keenan, Jim Marchant, Gerard Ramalho and Richard Scotti say they would roll back ballot harvesting and push for voter ID.
Of those candidates, Dahir, who won reelection in 2020 as a member of the Sparks City Council, is the only one who clearly said there was no election fraud in Nevada.
When the other candidates were asked what evidence there was of illegal acts, most pointed to “anecdotal evidence” and stories they’ve heard of multiple ballots being sent to addresses or to the wrong addresses.
Marchant, a former member of the Nevada Assembly, was one of the alternate “electors” who was present when six fake electors from the Nevada Republican Party submitted election certification to the National Archives with Trump as the winner. Marchant didn’t return multiple requests for an interview, but when speaking in October at a QAnon conference in Las Vegas, told the crowd of conspiracy theorists that election integrity was his top priority.
Marchant seems to be in the lead among the Republican base, having secured the endorsements of the Nevada Republican Party, MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell and the Nevada Republican Assembly.
A Nevada Independent and OH Predictive Insights poll from May put Marchant in the lead with 16% support, although 34% of respondents were unsure of their vote and another 26% said they would choose none of the Republican candidates.
But the other candidates are confident they will get the Republican vote and repair Nevada’s “broken” election system and improve the public’s trust.
Dahir is vice chair of economic development for the National League of Cities and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in organizational relationships. He has also been a pastor for 30 years.
Dahir thinks the 2020 election in Nevada was free and fair, but he does not think the process was put together properly.
“I don’t see the mass fraud in the state of Nevada,” Dahir said. “And I have no problem saying that because I’ve looked at everything.”
But if there are people who do not trust the system, then it needs to be fixed, he said.
“I don’t believe they should have changed the laws like they did right before an election,” Dahir said. “We have a repairing of a relationship we have to do with voting. This is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democrat issue. This is an American issue. … So we have to do some things to repair that breach, or repair that conversation.”
Dahir also differs from the other candidates, most of whom believe voting machines are insecure, in that he believes they are necessary to ensure elections are fair and accurate.
“I’m against hand counting,” Dahir said, as Republicans might say they will get people they trust to count the votes, but Democrats or independents may not trust them.
Like the other candidates, he is in favor of voter ID. If someone shows up without an ID, Dahir said, they could still submit a preliminary vote and then just follow it up after.
“Most people want it,” Dahir said. “We do it for everything else,” Dahir said. “It doesn’t make sense to people why we wouldn’t do it for this.”
Dahir wants to come together with the clerks throughout the state and make sure they have the “safest and most transparent elections in the country.”
“The one thing people don’t realize is the counties really run the elections in the state of Nevada,” Dahir said. “That is how it’s set up. They’re the ones with the jurisdiction to make decisions.”
“This job is bigger than being angry at voting for the Republicans,” Dahir said. “It’s more of building a team that can actually get all these things moving forward to make sure that we run them well, that we have good, strong principled leadership.”
Dahir’s main interest, if elected, would be working with businesses and serving as an advocate at the state level for them.
“I really want to get involved and help run our businesses better for the state, and really create an atmosphere for new business entrepreneurship,” Dahir said.
Keenan, a Clark County resident who has worked as a talent agent for 32 years as well as a consultant, also wants to help businesses, especially minority-owned and Hispanic-owned businesses, by removing the red tape to help them get off the ground.
“We are an international state,” Keenan said. “We welcome all different nationalities, and we better continue with the plan that we’re going to keep them.”
On election reform, Keenan, who previously worked for Democratic Gov. Bob Miller and in 1991 ran unsuccessfully for Las Vegas City Council, would propose one-day voting with a lawful ID, and she would eliminate the Dominion voting machines, ballot harvesting and mail-in ballots, except for people in the military or those who cannot leave their homes to vote. Republicans claim the Dominion voting software is flawed, although those claims haven’t been proven and officials have repeatedly said the system was not compromised.
“I’m going to fight like a mother,” Keenan said. “I care about everyone.”
Keenan does not think the 2020 election in Nevada was free and fair, saying she experienced a problem when she was voting. She had to sign an electronic machine with a sponge three times because her signature wasn’t recognized, she said. Keenan also tried to call in to see if her vote was counted at the Secretary of State’s office, but there was no one to talk to.
She also pointed to the “2000 Mules” documentary, which, according to its synopsis “exposes widespread, coordinated voter fraud in the 2020 election.” Multiple news outlets, including Reuters, fact checked the documentary and “did not find any concrete evidence definitively showing proof of fraud.”
“Our process is a mess,” Keenan said. “It’s an easy thing to figure out and fix. We need to get it done right this time. People are upset and they don’t trust anymore.”
When asked what she thought of Cegavske’s investigation into the election fraud claims, Keenan accused Cegavske of “hiding,” saying Cegavske had to “go along to get along.”
If elected, Keenan would also “purge the roll” and make sure the voter rolls are clean, since many people move in and out of the state.
Gerard Ramalho, a Las Vegas resident with 30 years of experience as a news anchor and reporter, also said he would make sure voter rolls are cleaned and verified on a monthly basis. When asked if he thinks the 2020 election was free and fair in Nevada, he said what he thinks was stolen was the public’s trust in the system.
“Our governor and our current lawmakers came in and changed the rules of the election overnight,” Ramalho said. Lawmakers said it was due to COVID-19, but those changes became permanent, he said.
Ramalho wants an election process that is “integrity-based” and benefits everyone. Ramalho would support a lawmaker drafting a voter ID requirement for elections, and he would fight to repeal the voting measures passed during the last legislature that allowed for universal mail ballots and ballot harvesting.
When asked about the investigation into voter fraud claims, he said he does not think every claim was investigated.
“There were many, many problems that did not go investigated,” Ramalho said. “The real problem is we need lawmakers who are going to be transparent and accountable, not lawmakers who get up there and change rules overnight without any public recourse or rebuttal.”
Regarding businesses, he wants to make sure the state is not spending too much and not overburdening and over-mandating businesses.
Like the last three candidates, Scotti, who served as Clark County District Court judge for six years, also does not think the 2020 election in Nevada was free and fair, saying he has heard a lot of anecdotal evidence of irregularities.
“There’s always going to be fraud in any profession, but half the people lost confidence in the election,” said Scotti, who has also participated in petitions such as the Repair the Vote PAC, which seeks voter ID and a repeal of mail-in voting.
Scotti, who has 30 years of experience as a business lawyer in Nevada, 10 years as a law business owner and was chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, said he does not think voter ID represses the vote and would result in an increase in voter turnout because it would increase voter confidence.
“I believe it’s unconstitutional to not require it,” Scotti said. But he would be against a federal law requiring voter ID, as that violates state sovereignty. If someone is indigent, he said, they can go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, have their fees waived and get an ID, he said.
He did not want to criticize Cegavske and her office’s investigation into election fraud but said he would have done it differently. He would have pushed for more time to develop the evidence on the issues that were raised, comparing it to the discovery period in a legal case.
Scotti also opposes ballot harvesting, saying there are insufficient safeguards and no “chain of custody.” In law, he said, every piece of evidence has a chain of custody, a documentation of everywhere the evidence has gone. But with ballot harvesting, there is no documentation or requirement to get a license to harvest ballots.
“We have such a great history in our country of broadening the right to vote and making it easier for people to vote,” Scotti said, pointing to eliminating property requirements, language requirements, poll taxes and expanding the rights to vote for minorities. “But security and transparency hasn’t kept up with that. … Our republic depends on it, and I want to be on the forefront working on that.”
Scotti also wants to bring his criminal experience as a judge to the table of the Board of Prison Commissioners. He plans to ensure the state is protecting victims’ rights, making sure victims have enough knowledge on the release of prisoners. He also wants to make sure prisoners are adequately educated so that when they are released, they can succeed in society.
Scotti assists a program that provides educational programs to inmates and teaches them marketing, résumé building and social skills.
“I was a very tough judge,” Scotti said. “When it came to violations of the law, I was very careful,” but when they served their time, “I wanted them to succeed.”
The other Republican candidates didn’t return calls to participate in this story.
