Pahrump, Nev.: Nevada’s secretary of state told a rural county late Thursday it must halt a first-of-its-kind hand count of mail-in votes after the state Supreme Court warned the current process violates Nevada election law.
Volunteers in rural Nye County had wrapped up the second day of hand-counting the ballots by the time the Supreme Court issued a three-page opinion siding with objections raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada.
Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who is in charge of elections and has been critical of the sort of voter-fraud conspiracy theories that fueled the hand tallying of ballots that began Wednesday, said the “hand-counting process must cease immediately.”
Citing the court’s ruling, she said in a letter to the Nye County clerk that the current hand-count procedure may not resume until after the close of polls on Nov. 8.
Cegavske said “no alternative hand-counting process may proceed” until she and the county can determine if there are any feasible alternatives that would comply with the Supreme Court order.
