Clark County says it found over 1,600 uncounted mail ballots

Clark County elections officials discovered more than 1,600 mail ballots that hadn’t been tabulated for the Nov. 5 election, the county announced Friday.

The ballots were found Thursday during preparation for a canvass of the election that was required to take place Friday. The registrar found 1,608 mail ballots that had been received on time, secured and processed but not tabulated, according to a letter the county wrote to the secretary of state’s office.

Those mail ballots have since been tabulated and counted, and the addition of votes did not change the outcome in any race, according to Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo.

The ballots had been separated to go through the duplication process, which happens when mail ballots cannot be read by electronic readers because they are either torn or folded too much, Portillo previously told the Review-Journal when explaining the process. In those cases, a bipartisan team puts the ballot in a machine that duplicates the ballot into one that is readable with the exact same information.

The unofficial results have been updated and reviewed by Portillo, and the results were ready for certification, the county wrote in the letter sent Friday morning.

Clark County did not explain how the mistake occurred, but it said in a letter that it will be issuing an audit with the state of Nevada and the secretary of state’s office.

During the canvass of the election at the Clark County Commission meeting on Friday, Portillo said the county will also conduct a review of the duplicating process to ensure the error doesn’t occur again.

The Nevada Republican Party demanded transparency regarding the discovery of the ballots, saying it raises questions about election integrity and mail ballot handling. It requested that the county recount those ballots with observers present.

“Voters deserve complete confidence in the electoral process, and any deviation from established legal standards for ballot tabulation undermines that trust,” the party said in a statement.

A Clark County spokesperson didn’t reply to an inquiry from the Review-Journal about whether those ballots were counted with observers present.

Chuck Muth, a conservative blogger who has been active in cleaning up the state’s voter rolls, said it is worth looking into how the incident happened to make sure it does not happen again. He said he wishes Republicans would not always assume something nefarious is going on.

Canvassing election in Clark County

The Clark County Commission unanimously voted to certify the 2024 election results Friday afternoon in accordance with state law, to the dismay of a group at the meeting who called commissioners “traitors.”

“You’re all going to prison,” Pam Bennetts said. “I tried to save your souls, but you didn’t even want to save your souls. … You guys don’t even care. It is absolute insanity. It’s going straight to Trump.”

Ahead of the commission’s canvass of the election results, dozens of audience members spoke during an hourlong public comment period. Some urged commissioners to not to certify the results, expressing concern about mismatched numbers from the county and the secretary of state’s office, contending that the county “deleted votes” and alleging the election was stolen from Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown, who conceded his race against Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen.

“This whole event is a gigantic waste of time and money,” Henderson resident Mary Rooney said. “The alleged purpose is to reassure the public that we have had a free and fair and accurate election. Unfortunately, this charade does just the opposite. Not just it is fanning the flames of the problem, it is eroding our confidence in our election process.”

While Republican President-elect Donald Trump won Nevada by more than 46,000 votes with a total of 750,095 votes, Brown lost his bid for election by nearly 24,000 votes — and received about 74,000 votes fewer than what Trump received. Political science experts have said it indicates both split-ticket voting and ballot roll-offs, a trend where people vote at the top of the ticket but not down the ballot.

Other members of the public urged the commission to follow its duty to certify the results.

“This body’s responsibility is simple: to certify the will of the Nevada voters,” said Mathilda Guerrero Miller, government relations director at Native Voters Alliance Nevada.

In a phone interview Friday, Muth rejected claims that Brown’s election was stolen.

“Sam is a great person, but he ran a terrible campaign and was not a great candidate,” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me.”

Some people also spoke about wanting additional security measures, such as voter ID. A few others expressed disappointment in the county’s decision to limit the usual three-minute time period allotted for public comment to one minute each.

“Your job is to listen to us,” said Tyler Woerner, a Las Vegas resident. “As American citizens, don’t we have the right to voice our opinion?”

Details of the county canvass

In her report to the commission, Portillo said the canvass found there were 195 discrepancies in the 1,033,285 ballots cast in the 917 precincts. Of those discrepancies, 109 voters fled the voting machine before casting their ballot, 43 were activation errors, and 43 voted in the wrong precinct, Portillo said.

There were no tabulation errors, and those discrepancies would not have altered any contest, Portillosaid.

In the election, 19,724 provisional ballots were cast. Of those, 18,565 were verified and counted, and 1,159 were not eligible to vote, Portillo said.

Audits were performed on 2 percent of machines used, and the accuracy certification board also certified the functionality of the tabulating system. All systems were found to be 100 percent accuracy in the tabulation of votes, Portillo said.

9,000 ballots tossed

Over 9,000 mail ballots were left uncounted in the Nov. 5 election because of a lack of signature cure.

Of the 9,174 ballots tossed, 7,544 came from Clark County, according to data from the secretary of state’s office. Most of the ballots belonged to voters not from either of the two major parties. Democratic voters made up 19.3 percent of ballots not cured, Republican voters made up 24.6 percent and 56.1 percent either nonpartisan or from another party.

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said in a statement that it is “very disappointing,” that 9,174 Nevadans did not have their votes counted.

“Signature verification and curing are important elements of keeping our elections secure, but we can’t lose sight of every eligible voter’s fundamental right to have their ballot counted,” he said in the statement.

Aguilar said his office did everything it could to support the signature cure process, including sending cards to every active voter encouraging them to update their signature and a text message campaign to all voters who required a cure. He encouraged voters to check and update their contact information on VOTE.NV.gov to prepare for the 2026 election.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on X.