Hand ballot counting begins slowly in Nye County

PAHRUMP — Ballot counting began slowly Wednesday in a Nevada jurisdiction where officials citing concerns about voting machine conspiracy theories pressed forward with an unprecedented hand tally of votes cast by mail in advance of Election Day.

One group of five people working in a room witnessed by The Associated Press tallied 50 ballots in three hours and nine minutes in Nye County, where about 33,000 people are registered to vote. Similar groups of five people worked in five additional rooms in a county office building in Pahrump.

The county reported that almost 1,100 ballots had been cast by mail and in-person as of Tuesday.

“It will get better,” interim Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf told the group — one reading names aloud, a verifier looking over her shoulder and three talliers marking sheets of paper — sitting around a wooden table. A sign next to a video camera above them urged them to “FOCUS, FOCUS.” Kampf said the next batch of ballots to be counted would be 25 at a time, instead of 50.

The county received guidance from the state Supreme Court last Friday for counting to start Wednesday — if officials prevent public release of early results in any race and only release video of the count after polls close on Nov. 8.

The county on Monday scrapped a plan to livestream the count, and the Nevada secretary of state’s office was still reviewing the plan when Kampf swore in the first shift of 30 people for the morning count. A similar afternoon shift began after 1 p.m.

“I’ve got a job to do here, which is a hand-count,” Kampf told reporters at the start. He said county attorneys were to communicate with secretary of state officials following the Nevada Supreme Court ruling.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m moving ahead with a compliant hand-count process,” he said.

The secretary of state’s office said Nye County had to split teams into separate rooms so anyone observing the count of early in-person and mailed ballots would not know the “totality of returns.” Participants were not identified for the media.

Observers must sign a form saying they won’t release results they overhear. Anyone who does so could be charged with a gross misdemeanor.

The hand-count of all paper ballots will run parallel to the county’s machine tabulation process.

The secretary of state’s office, which oversees county clerks, has the power to approve or reject Nye County’s plan. It had not decided by late Tuesday whether the proposal was sufficient to meet the requirements set out in the Supreme Court order.

The concern over safeguarding the early voting tallies is because the process is so unusual. Ballots cast early, either in-person or by mail, are typically counted by machine on Election Day, with results released only after polls close. In most places, hand counts are used after an election on a limited basis to ensure the machine tallies are accurate.

In hand counts, teams work together to verify the results, calling out voters’ selections race by race, ballot by ballot.

Nye County commissioners voted to run a hand count of all its ballots after being bombarded with complaints by residents who have been subjected to nearly two years of conspiracy theories related to voting machines and false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Trump won 69 percent of the vote in Nye County even as President Joe Biden won Nevada by about 33,500 votes.

Nye County wanted to start counting its early ballots before Election Day because the process is so arduous and time-consuming. Waiting until Election Day to begin a full hand count would risk the county missing the state’s certification deadline, Nov. 17.