Just six weeks after the 2020 election, a group of Nevada Republicans gathered outside the Legislative Building in Carson City to pledge the state’s six electoral votes to Donald Trump.
Unlike other swing states, there was never much worry that Nevada — with a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in the Legislature — would have its normal electoral count process hijacked by Republicans attempting to overturn the election. The state’s six electoral votes were cast for Joe Biden, who won the state by more than 33,000 votes.
Since the conclusion of the 2020 election, though, a stream of Trump’s most fervent supporters and allies in Nevada have led calls to overturn the results of the election and spread unproven claims of widespread election fraud while casting doubt on the state’s election system.
But with Democrats in control of the levers of power, Republican election activists, including secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant and unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert, turned to another path — rural county commissioners.
In the wake of Trump’s loss, a handful of rural county commissioners, who wield power as policy-setters and executive officers in some of Nevada’s least-populated corners, brought forward “election integrity” measures and promulgated false claims about the 2020 election.
Hundreds of emails obtained via records requests, reviews of county commission meetings across the state and interviews with county officials show how their pursuits melded with ideas from the likes of Marchant and Gilbert, who worked through county commissioners to bring fringe conspiracy theories about voting machines to the center of county politics and state election administration.
Their efforts to make election-related changes targeted the state’s rural and right-leaning areas, building momentum for what they hoped would become a statewide trend.