PAHRUMP, Nev. (KTNV) — Voting is well underway in Pahrump, where Nye County election officials have made national headlines over their push to hand-count ballots.
After a lawsuit by the ACLU, a ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court, and a directive from Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, Nye County will now use machines to count ballots.
The Nevada Supreme Court issued its emergency decision siding with the ACLU, saying the way talliers were counting and reading votes out loud violated state law, which prohibits the early release of election results.
Nye County submitted a revised plan to the Secretary of State’s office that would have volunteers work in silence, but Cegavske sent a response asking for more clarification about how they will ensure the integrity of the election.
Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf claims they are now in compliance with the Secretary of State’s guidelines. They plan to use tabulators as a primary method and hand-counting as a parallel method.
People who voted in-person Tuesday have mixed feelings about the hand-counting addition.
“Of all the elections I’ve voted in, it’s probably in the top 10. I like same-day voting, I like paper ballots, and I like election boards to get to it and get it done as fast as possible," said Duane Price, a Pahrump resident of four years.
“I’ve been in Pahrump for 30 years and this is the worst election I’ve ever participated in. So many different things this year, and I truly do not appreciate five to six text messages a day from parties I’m not even enrolled with. It’s wrong; don’t tell me how to vote,” said Cyndi Smith, who cast her ballot on Tuesday.
Kampf says he hopes to resume hand-counting by Thursday after running volunteers through information and training sessions on Wednesday.
That would leave about eight days to count up to 33,000 ballots by the time votes have to be canvassed on Nov. 18.
"It's a function of how many volunteers we can get back," Kampf said. "As you can imagine, our process was disrupted based on what we had in place that was approved by the Secretary of State’s office, but we revised our procedure. We've got approval — with some modifications — based on what we submitted, and it's a function of the resources we can gather."
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