The Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has sued a rural county in the state after its interim elections clerk implemented a new rule to hand-count all paper ballots alongside a machine tabulator amid fears of voter fraud.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, the state chapter accused Nye County officials of violating the state constitution and federal law, arguing the practice of beginning to hand-count mail-in ballots two weeks before Election Day risks the public release of early voting results. This, in turn, could put poll workers at risk of being charged with a misdemeanor, as state laws criminalize the release of early voting information.
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Under the county’s plan, teams of five poll workers will hand-count the ballots, including one reader who announces the results, a verifier who ensures the reader is correct, and three talliers who write down the results. The talliers then compare their results to ensure they are the same before submitting them.
Although Nye County will continue to use touch screens at polling places to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ACLU argues in its lawsuit that the new policies will allow election workers to seek information regarding one’s disability or turn voters away based on “arbitrary decision making.” Doing so would violate the Help Americans Vote Act, the state chapter claims.
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Nye County is one of the first jurisdictions in the country to implement such a measure to respond to allegations of widespread fraud and mistrust of voting machines in the 2020 election, which have been roundly rejected by election officials and the courts. The county was initially going to have hand-counting as the main vote-counting method, but officials later made it secondary to machine-counting in order to comply with state regulations.
However, Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf has suggested the county may consider moving away from voting machines altogether in the future, according to the Associated Press.
