Nevada elections office seeks clarity on ballot hand count
Nevada elections office seeks clarity on ballot hand count
The Nevada elections office is seeking to clarify how the results of the Nov. 6 election will be reported.
Officials want to know how the board of judges that is responsible for certifying the results of statewide elections will determine how the returns were calculated and how the results will be reported to election boards, as well as the process for determining the election night results.
The state’s elections office could not be reached for comment after the vote.
But the state elections office’s director, Richard Ashworth, said the first questions should be asked how the counts were performed. The question of how the election results will be reported was raised in the race for the Nevada Supreme Court.
In a decision issued on Nov. 25, justices ordered Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, to notify the Nevada State Bar of its intent to contest his election because Laxalt’s campaign was the subject of the investigation into vote fraud in the Nov. 6 election.
The decision did not rule out Laxalt’s candidacy on an interim basis to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Laxalt is running for the vacant seat. He is challenging Democratic Sen. Marilyn Newcomb in the race for the right to fill the seat left vacant when Justice Daniel K. Nauman, the president of the state Supreme Court, died in August.
Laxalt has declined to state whether he would stand for reelection in 2014. The attorney general’s office said Laxalt would address the concerns raised in the court decision during a news conference on Dec. 14.
The state elections office’s director, Richard Bateman, recently said the office will examine the elections process and has asked the attorney general’s office to join the effort to figure out the process for calculating the results of the Nov. 6 election.
The attorney general’s office, Bateman said, could assist the Nevada elections office in its efforts to develop a consistent and transparent way for counting the ballots. The