Key Nevada county expects to count most remaining ballots by Saturday

Nevada’s Clark County, a Democratic stronghold key to the party’s chances in the state’s uncalled races, expects to report most of its uncounted ballots by Saturday, the county’s top election official said on Thursday.

Joe Gloria, Clark County’s registrar of voters, said at a press conference that a little more than 50,000 ballots still need to be counted, defending election officials’ pace after criticisms from former President Trump and the state GOP.

“My staff has been working very diligently,” said Gloria. “We’ve been here from early in the morning until late at night. We’ve been fully staffed. We’re working as hard as we possibly can in order to get the ballots counted, but whether we like it or not there’s no way that we can move any faster than we’re currently moving.”

He added that the remaining votes all represent mail-in votes, which require officials to individually match voters’ signatures on those ballots to the state’s records.

That creates a multi-step process before those results are reported. Gloria said roughly 200 people are working to count votes in the county, and additional votes will be released each evening.

Republicans hold slight leads in Nevada’s gubernatorial and Senate races as of Thursday, but the thousands of remaining votes in Clark County are expected to tilt Democratic and are crucial to the party’s hopes of prevailing.

Clark County also includes multiple tight house races that have yet to be called.

The timeline has garnered criticisms from the Nevada Republican Party.

“Unacceptable that Clark County is so poorly managed that they failed to plan to release election results Election Night,” the state party tweeted late Wednesday night. “Just one more example of failed Democrat rule—looking forward to Republican wins across the ballot to bring balance, accountability, and transparency!” 

Trump, without evidence, accused the county of having a “corrupt voting system” and implementing the delays to have “more time to cheat.”

Clark County responded by releasing a statement calling Trump’s accusations “outrageous.”

“We have heard his outrageous claims, but he he is obviously still misinformed about the law and our election processes that ensure the integrity of elections in Clark County,” the statement read, parts of which were read by Gloria at the press conference.

Gloria stressed that the county must also follow statutory deadlines that give voters whose mail ballot signatures did not match state records until Monday evening to cure their ballot. Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day are also valid if they arrive before Saturday evening.

Nevada also has yet to count provisional ballots. Under federal law, voters who declare at a polling location that they are eligible to cast a vote after being told otherwise can still fill out a ballot, which is then sequestered until eligibility is verified.

Nevada further allows voters to register to vote on Election Day, but their ballots are similarly considered provisional ballots until their registration is processed successfully.

Gloria said provisional ballots won’t be reported until at least Wednesday, which could add up to 5,555 new votes to the existing total.

“We have provisional ballots that we cannot process until we’ve sent all of the information up to the secretary of state, who then compiles a report with all 17 counties so that we can identify any duplicates or somebody who has illegally voted in more than one county, which is something that we certainly want to prevent to uphold the Integrity of our process,” Gloria said.