Data journalist: ‘Nevada is a sh*t show’
by Megan Barth, The Nevada Globe, June 15, 2022
June 14th, formerly known as Primary Election Day in Nevada, has passed, but the election is not still certified and it is 2 am on June 15. The polls were supposed to close at 7 pm on June 14, but three to four polls in the state still had lines at 8:30 pm and impacted the ability to begin the counting of ballots in all 17 counties. One of the mismanaged polls was in Incline Village, a small, mountain-resort town which is home to 8,429 registered voters. A “local” friend of mine reported that this was the first time in 20 years he waited in line for more than five minutes and he waited an hour to cast a ballot at 4 pm. According to a report from Washoe County, voter turn out in Incline Village was about 14 percent.
By 11 pm, The Nevada Secretary of State’s office still had not reported any data from the largest county in Nevada, Clark County, but had reported some data from Churchill and Story County. Reported glitches with thumb drives in Clark County was confirmed to The Globe and Washoe County had a “technical issue” with their dashboard so they shared excel files that captured only 10% of the vote at 10:51 pm. In a following tweet, Washoe confirmed that they will complete the counting of election day ballots through the night and begin again in the morning to count mail in ballots.
The saying, “you had one job” keeps running through my mind, for if a midterm primary election with an estimated 26% voter turn out can produce this much chaos and delay, I shudder to think what November will bring,
As we observed on Twitter last night:
“Polls closed two hours ago. Nevada has released zero results. Note that Texas, South Carolina, Maine and North Dakota all ran clean, efficient elections today. This isn’t a USA thing. It’s a Nevada thing.”
Ambassador Ric Grenell weighed in:
“Nevada voting needs fixing. 2.5 hours of just a few people secretly managing the votes – while everyone else is in the dark – creates integrity concerns.”
Data journalist Rich Baris captured the mood:
“Nevada is a shit show. If a government cannot even count votes, you can be pretty certain that they are not competent to do anything else.
Shame on the Silver State. It’s almost as if there are people who want to light this powder keg.
It doesn’t matter if people are still waiting on line hours after the polls close.
- That’s a sign of incompetence in and of itself
- Turnout estimates were not excessive leading up to and throughout ED.
- The 3d most populous state (FL) collects and counts votes just fine.”
Yet, amid all this utter chaos and incompetency, GOP winners were declared by the Associated Press (not the Nevada Secretary of State) and are as follows: Joe Lombardo will face off against Governor Steve Sisolak. Adam Laxalt ran away with a huge lead over “surging” Sam Brown to challenge Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. Jim Marchant advances for Secretary of State, Michelle Fiore secured her place on the November ballot for treasurer, and April Becker looks to unseat Rep. Susie Lee in Congressional District 3.
The Globe will continue to follow the results and will provide updates.