Trump Rips Nevada, Arizona, Over Slow Ballot Counting: ‘Corrupt Voting System’

Trump Rips Nevada, Arizona, Over Slow Ballot Counting: ‘Corrupt Voting System’
Nevada Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt and his wife, Jamie, thank supporters at the Red Rocks Casino in Summerlin, Nevada, on Nov. 8, 2022. (John Haughey/The Epoch Times)
11/11/2022
Updated:
11/11/2022
0:00

Former President Donald Trump has ripped Nevada’s Clark County and Arizona over their slow pace of ballot counting.

He wrote on Truth Social on Nov. 10, “Clark County, Nevada, has a corrupt voting system (be careful Adam!), as do many places in our soon to be Third World Country. Arizona even said ‘by the end of the week!’ – They want more time to cheat!”

His remarks came as Senate control remains uncertain about continuing vote counting in the two states.

In Clark County, Nevada’s largest county, election officials told reporters that they will count and update ballot results over the next week.

Meanwhile, the Senate and gubernatorial races in Arizona don’t have conclusive results as hundreds of thousands of ballots await processing and tabulation.

Trump’s comments mentioned his endorsed Nevada Republican candidate for Senate, Adam Laxalt, who is maintaining a slight lead of around one percent over his opponent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto

As of late Nov. 10, Laxalt had 450,534 (49 percent) votes while Masto registered 441,546 votes (48 percent) with 90 percent of the ballots counted, according to AP.

Meanwhile, Democrats held narrow leads in key Arizona contests on Thursday, but the races for U.S. Senate and governor were still undecided with about one fifth of the total ballots left to be counted.

According to AP, Democratic incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly retained a commanding lead of 5.6 percentage points over Republican Blake Masters, while Democrat Katie Hobbs had a much tighter lead of 1.4 percentage points over Republican Kari Lake in the governor’s race. Democrats also led in the races for secretary of state and attorney general.

Clark County Response

On the same day, Clark County fired back at Trump’s criticism, calling it “outrageous.” The post by the county on Twitter contended that the former president “is obviously still misinformed about the law and our election processes.”

“First, we could not speed up the process even if we wanted to,” the county stated, noting that Nevada will accept mail-in ballots through Nov. 12, as long as they were postmarked by Nov. 8.

The state also has a ballot curing process, which permits voters who submitted ballots with a mistake or missing information to correct those issues by Nov. 14.

This regulation also prevents duplicate ballots from being submitted but may drag on the counting process.

“All of our election systems are certified by the state and federal governments for use in the State of Nevada, and there are several state required audits done before, during, and after each election, which further ensure the reliability and integrity of the election,” Clark County affirmed.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said at a press conference on Thursday that the county with 1.3 million registered voters, has more than 50,000 outstanding ballots with more mail-in to roll in.
Jeff Louderback contributed to this report.