Trump Loses Nevada Suit to Halt Ballot Count in Observer Suit
Trump Loses Nevada Suit to Halt Ballot Count in Observer Suit
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s campaign lost an effort to halt the counting of ballots in Nevada’s most populous county after a state court judge ruled last week that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing by election officials.
The campaign and the Nevada Republican Party sued last week, alleging Clark County -- home to Las Vegas -- refused to allow full observation of the ballot-counting process as required under state law. But Judge James E. Wilson ruled Oct. 29 that the campaign hadn’t provided enough evidence to back its claim.
“The president’s deliberate attempts to undermine Nevada’s elections have failed yet again,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, said Monday in a statement. “He has made every attempt to control the outcome of this election without any regard for the health and safety of residents or Nevada’s state laws designed to protect the sanctity of the ballot.”
The Trump campaign and the GOP have lost lawsuits in several states over procedures for accepting mail-in ballots, after they failed to convince judges that absentee voting would lead to a massive fraud.
The Nevada suit alleged some observers are being kept as far as 25 feet away from the counting process, where they can’t see election workers’ computer screens or observe phone calls to voters who need to fix issues with their ballots. It also said that an offer by Republicans to pay for a camera to record the process as an alternative to in-person observation was refused.
The judge said there’s no constitutional right to photograph or videotape the ballot-counting process.
“No evidence was presented that there was an error in matching a ballot signature,” the judge wrote. “No evidence was presented that any election staff were biased or prejudiced for or against any party or candidate.”
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