LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by former President Donald Trump’s campaign and national and state Republicans that challenged Nevada’s mail-in ballot deadline.
Nevada state law requires all mail-in ballots to be mailed and postmarked by Election Day. There is then a four-day period after Election Day when county clerks can accept the postmarked ballots and process them. The lawsuit targeted that grace period, claiming the law “extends Nevada’s federal election past the Election Day established by Congress.”
The lawsuit claimed clerks will count ballots that are not yet postmarked on Election Day, though that itself would violate Nevada law. There is no evidence in the lawsuit for the claim. The lawsuit also claimed Democrats tend to mail their mail-in ballots later due to “get-out-the-vote drives.”
The plaintiffs filed their case in May. In her ruling Wednesday, District Court Judge Miranda Du said in part that “the causal link between counting mail ballots received after Election Day in
Nevada and [plaintiffs] alleged electoral injuries is too speculative to support standing.”
Du also said simply because Democrats may tend to vote more by mail, there is no evidence Republicans are harmed by post-Election Day counting, noting Republicans also have the ability to vote in the same manner.
“The Nevada mail ballot receipt deadline does not have an ‘individual and personal’ effect on the voting power of Republican voters; it neither undermines their access to the polls nor disproportionately diminishes the weight of their votes relative to other Nevada voters,” Du wrote.
Nevada is one of several states with universal mail balloting. Voters can choose to vote in person or by mail early or in person on Election Day. Registered voters can also opt out of receiving a mail-in ballot if they wish.
Measures the Nevada Legislature put in place in 2021, alongside the mail-in voting law, scrubbed voter rolls of non-eligible and deceased voters. Just over half of Nevada’s ballots cast in the 2022 general were mail ballots, according to a thorough study released by the federal government.
Though claiming widespread evidence in the 2020 election, Republicans never provided any evidence of wrongdoing in Nevada. Then-Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, condemned the claims, saying the election was fair and secure.
The Nevada GOP repeatedly denied requests from 8 News Now to review their evidence throughout the fall of 2020. At a news conference on Nov. 5, 2020, where surrogates from the Trump campaign announced a federal lawsuit, speakers told reporters to find the evidence for themselves. That lawsuit was later dropped. During the sole hearing in that case, a lawyer provided no evidence of fraud and did not verbally bring up any evidence to the federal judge.
No widespread voter fraud was ever discovered in Nevada. The state supreme court denied the Trump campaign’s request to overturn the state’s election results and proclaim the then-president the winner. Biden won Nevada by more than 33,000 votes, a result the court certified that November. Several Republicans, including Cegavske and then-Attorney General William Barr, said there was no evidence of any widespread fraud.
Colorado, which is a universal mail-in ballot state, requires all ballots to be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. In contrast, Utah, also a universal mail-in ballot state, requires ballots be postmarked one day before Election Day and received before the county canvass, several days later, according to vote.org. Nearly half of all states require a ballot be received by Election Day.
