Few election problems reported in Nevada

Plenty of Nevadans probably weren't pleased with the outcome of Tuesday's election.

But few had problems with the actual voting process, election officials said.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he had not received any reports of problems at the polls as of Wednesday.

The secretary of state's office, meanwhile, received three reports about people having trouble voting. Two involved problems with touch-screen voting machines that were quickly rectified. The third involved an Elko man who tried to vote though his registration had been canceled. The man hadn't voted in years and hadn't responded to requests to update his registration. He was not allowed to cast a ballot.

Some voters also had to wait in long lines, causing some polls to close late.

Overall, "I would say it went really smoothly," said Catherine Lu, spokeswoman for the secretary of state.

But the election was not without snags. On Friday, a Clark County woman was arrested by the state's Elections Integrity Task Force and charged with trying to vote more than once in the same election.

The woman, Roxanne Rubin, 56, was upset poll workers didn't check her ID, so she tried to vote twice to prove a point, according to the secretary of state's office.

A North Carolina-based group called Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee said it filed a complaint Tuesday with the state based on a Review-Journal editorial column about alleged voter registration fraud involving two noncitizens registered to vote.

William Gheen, president of the group, said he mailed letters to Clark County election officials, the Federal Election Commission and the FBI urging the agencies to investigate what was described as two anonymous noncitizens urged to vote by a union operative under threats of deportation.

Gheen said he will lobby the state Legislature "to take immediate action to use the Department of Homeland Security database to weed out illegal immigrants."

Lomax said he forwarded the letter to the secretary of state's office. Lu said she could not confirm or deny whether the office had received the complaint or whether it had opened an investigation.

Lomax doesn't think many noncitizens have illegally cast ballots in Clark County.

"I don't think it's a big problem," he said. But "I can't say it's never occurred."

While turnout was low in other parts of the nation, Nevada bucked that trend.

For the first time, more than 1 million Nevadans cast ballots in an election, surpassing the record of 970,019 set in 2008. In Clark County, nearly 690,000 voters cast ballots, breaking the previous record of nearly 653,000 from four years ago.

Review-Journal reporter Keith Rogers contributed to this report.