The Nevada Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a conservative group’s challenge to a new Nevada law that allows for mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit was filed by the Election Integrity Project of Nevada, backed by former state lawmaker and failed U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle. It argued that Assembly Bill 4 — the law passed during a special session in August that requires mail-in ballots be sent to active registered voters across the state as part of the state’s plan to let people vote safely during the pandemic — violates the state constitution because it allows for “standardless counting procedures” and lacks safeguards against voter fraud….
In their unanimous ruling issued Wednesday, the justices said that the lower court was not wrong in denying the group’s ask for a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the Nevada secretary of state from implementing the legislation. They agreed with the lower court that the group did not present substantial evidence that the parts of the law that were challenged “are not rationally related to the State’s interest in ensuring that all active registered voters have an opportunity to exercise their right to vote in a safe and secure manner during a pandemic.”
The justices also disagreed with the argument from Angle’s group that mail-in ballots would lead to more voter fraud, an argument that Republicans have tried and failed to make in court several times this election cycle, including ahead of the primary election.
The group, the justices said, “presented no concrete evidence that such events will occur or that the Secretary of State’s maintenance of the voter rolls exacerbated any such problem.”
You can read the unpublished order here.