Early voting totals 56 percent in Nevada

More than half of Nevada's registered voters cast their ballots ahead of time, with 56 percent of the state's more than 1.2 million performing their civic duty.

That's according to the secretary of state's office, which released the data Saturday.

A total of nearly 308,000 Democrats, or 44 percent of all early voters, cast ballots, compared with nearly 260,000 Republicans, or 37 percent. About 134,000 voters not registered with the two major parties account for the rest.

Republican political consultant Jim Denton of Henderson said the numbers bode well for President Barack Obama. He noted Democrats comfortably outpaced the GOP in early voting in Clark County, and held their own in Washoe County around Reno. Democrats also hold a 90,000 voter registration edge over Republicans statewide.

"I think the early voting numbers are bad news for Romney," Denton told The Associated Press just a few days before Tuesday's general election.

Before his office put out the early voting numbers Saturday, Secretary of State Ross Miller responded to allegations that the voting machines in Nevada were inaccurate.

Republican National Committee chief counsel John Phillippe Jr., in a letter earlier in the week to several states including Nevada, alleged that several of the machines in Clark County have been malfunctioning. In some cases, the machines have been choosing the presidential candidates for the voters because they haven't been calibrated correctly, he said. For example, when the voters were pushing for Mitt Romney, they were getting Obama instead, he wrote.

Miller's staff pulled five machines that were suspected of malfunctioning from their polling locations. Then he personally operated each one of them at the Clark County elections office in the central valley in order to prove a point.

"There's nothing wrong with them," he said later Saturday in a telephone interview. "We conducted a full investigation, interviewed all the complainants, went back to the machines where they voted, pulled up the ballots, pulled the machines, and there's nothing wrong with them. These machines are calibrated twice daily and they don't appear to have any problems.

"The votes will be counted fairly and accurately."

That was just one of a number of election problems that the secretary of state's office and law enforcement handled last week. Another involved Roxanne Rubin, 56, of Henderson, who was arrested Friday afternoon as she was arriving for work at the Riviera on allegations that she tried to cast her ballot at two different polling places.

Police said that after voting early at the Anthem Community Center on Hampton Road on Oct. 29, she told a man that she had signed her name differently and that "they did not ask for ID." Investigators believe that statement prompted her to try to vote later at a Silverado Ranch polling location on South Eastern Avenue in Las Vegas.

That's according to the criminal complaint released in connection with the state's only case of voter fraud thus far.

The crime is punishable by a prison sentence and is considered a felony.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Tom Ragan at tragan@reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.