RENO, Nev. (AP) — The Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed an emergency petition with the state Supreme Court Monday to challenge the plan. of Nye County and its acting clerk from counting electoral votes by hand and by machine, a method devised by elected officials and candidates acting on false claims of voter fraud.
The lawsuit is nearly identical to the ACLU lawsuit that was recently dismissed in Nye County District Court on technicalities. The district judge did not receive a record of the publicly available county commission meeting referenced in the ACLU’s petition. He said it was unreasonable for the court to hold a seven-and-a-half-hour meeting, among other matters.
The ACLU asked the court to rule by Friday, five days before Nye County officials plan to begin early manual counting of mail-in ballots and one day before in-person early voting begins nationwide. condition.
In an email, Acting Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf declined to comment on the lawsuit. “Instead, the county is devoting its limited time and resources to meeting its obligations to Nye County voters,” Kampf said, adding that the county is still finalizing the physical setup of polling places. They will offer tours of their facilities prior to the start of early voting, he added.
The ACLU said the plan to start counting mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day risks early voting results being released. Alleges county officials’ method of using a “special needs” touchscreen tabulator illegally allows poll workers to ask about a voter’s disability or turn away eligible voters based on “arbitrary decision-making.” “, and that Nye County’s wording of “special needs” is ambiguous.
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The organization also argues that the county’s “strict signature verification,” which allows the clerk to request an identification card if a voter’s signature fails, violates state statute.
Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions nationwide to act on election conspiracies related to mistrust of voting machines. Nevada’s least populous county, Esmeralda, used the manual count to certify the results of the June primary, when officials spent more than seven hours counting 317 ballots cast.
After the ACLU filed its original petition, a Nye County spokesperson said in a news release that the county would mount a “vigorous legal defense that clears up the misleading allegations and disposes of legal action as quickly as possible.”
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