Why ACLU says Nye County played a role in statewide vote count delays

An ACLU attorney said Nye County’s reliance on paper ballots contributed to statewide delays in counting votes.

Like some polling places in Clark County, the Bob Ruud Community Center in Pahrump — the town’s only voting site — saw hours-long lines to vote Tuesday evening. Nevada voters were able to cast their ballots as long as they were in line by 7 p.m., and in some places, many voters showed up late in the day.

But unlike Clark County, which uses touch-screen voting machines, most in-person voters in Pahrump filled out paper ballots. Nye County officials implemented that system following conspiracy theories about voting machines after the last presidential election.

Other counties could not start counting their votes until all votes were cast and all polls were closed statewide.

ACLU of Nevada Staff Attorney Jacob Smith said voting did not end at the community center until about 9:30 p.m.

“Nobody else that finished on time could start counting until Pahrump got through the long line it created for itself,” he said.

“It held up the entire state,” he added.

According to county spokesperson Arnold Knightly, three voting machines were at the Pahrump site and only about 70 people asked to use them.

“If they don’t ask for the voting machine, they get the paper ballot,” he said. He attributed the delays to the time it took to process a large number of same-day registrations — 174 — in Pahrump, a problem he said other jurisdictions experienced.

The Nye County Commission decided in 2022 that it would rely on paper ballots and hand counting to check the work of tabulation machines. The initiative was supported by then-County Clerk Mark Kampf, an election denier who falsely claimed that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

The ACLU sued, and the process was slow; at one point that year, it took the county three hours to tally 50 ballots by hand.

Kampf wrote in previous legislative testimony that Nye was the only county to use paper ballots for in-person voting. Paper ballots make recounts easier, he said, and allow in-person voters to cast their ballots the same way mail voters would. He added that voting machines are expensive.

Smith said that although he primarily attributes Pahrump’s delay to the paper ballot system, another polling location, more poll workers and more robust training for the workers would have been helpful.

Some voters told him they didn’t know they could cast their votes on one of the three voting machines, but they would have liked to do so, he said.

In addition, Smith said, the county tabulates votes in Tonopah, which is an hours-long drive from Pahrump.

Knightly confirmed that all Nye ballots were counted in Tonopah and said the count was done via machine. He said he didn’t think it would have been more efficient to count ballots in Pahrump because they would still have to be brought in from different areas in the county.

“Voting machines are safe,” said Smith. “They’re utilized by other counties in the system, utilized effectively in much larger counties than Nye County. The fact that Nye County is still pushing paper ballots and wasting not only Nye County residents’ time, but all of Nevada residents’ time is extremely infuriating.”