Trump Sues for Better Access to Ballot Counting in Nevada

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a new election lawsuit in Nevada on Friday, starting a fresh battle over ballots in the swing state less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 contest.

The campaign and the Nevada Republican Party claim that a Clark County official running the election in the state’s most populous region is refusing to allow full observation of the ballot-counting process as required under state law.

They say some observers are kept as far as 25 feet away from the counting process, where they can’t see election workers’ computer screens or observe phone calls made to voters who need to fix issues with their ballots. They claim that an offer by Republicans to pay for a camera to record the process as an alternative to in-person observation was also refused.

“In a voting system that Democrats rammed into place less than 100 days from Election Day, the highest levels of transparency and accountability are necessary to ensure every valid ballot in Nevada counts -- once,” Matthew Morgan, the Trump campaign’s general counsel, said in a statement.

Stop Counting

The campaign and the GOP, which filed the suit in state court in Carson City, asked the court to order Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria to stop counting ballots if he can’t implement a plan that alleviates their concerns right away.

Gloria didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

The complaint also names Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican who clashed with her party in the earlier suit. Jennifer Russell, a spokesperson for Cegavske, declined to comment.

The campaign previously sued Nevada over the state’s plan to automatically send mail-in ballots to all registered voters as a result of the pandemic. That suit was tossed out by a judge who said Republicans had failed to produce evidence to back their claim that the plan would lead to rampant voter fraud. Democrats have accused Trump and the GOP of using waves of litigation to sow doubt about mail-in voting and limit access to absentee ballots.

The new suit alleges that election officials are violating state law as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It seeks a court order requiring Gloria to submit a plan for allowing proper observation of the counting process and improvements to the security of ballots.

Among other things, the suit claims a machine that scans ballot-envelope signatures for comparison to voter signatures on file is using settings that don’t find enough discrepancies that result in voters being asked to “cure” the mismatch before the ballot is counted. Rejection rates in Clark County are lower than in other counties, the campaign alleges. It also claims that ballots are currently being counted in a way that illegally compromises their secrecy.

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