Nevada Supreme Court Moves to Stop Information Release of Votes and Tallies from Hand Count of Ballots in Nye County

Following up on Gowri’s post and this AP report, the ACLU just got the following order from the Nevada Supreme Court:

Filed Order Granting Motion for Clarification. Petitioners have now filed an emergency motion for clarification, asserting that respondents have interpreted this language in our order as differentiating between the “vote count process” and “election results,” such that respondents believe only the “totality of vote count results” is precluded from premature release. Respondents oppose the motion. Because it appears that respondents over-read our order and clarification is warranted, we grant petitioners’ motion and hereby clarify that “any election results,” as set forth in the mandate directing respondents to “ensure public observers do not prematurely learn any election results,” includes orally pronounced ballot selections and per-room tallies. As our October 21 order explained, the ability of observers to hear the read-aloud selections on ballots violates NRS 293.269935(3) (prohibiting the early release of “voting results” and criminalizing the dissemination “to the public in any way information pertaining to the count of mail ballots”) and NRS 293.3606(5) (barring the premature reporting of “returns for early voting” and criminalizing the public dissemination of “information relating to the count of returns for early voting”). Therefore, observers may not be positioned so as to become privy to the ballot selections and room tallies. The specifics of the hand-count process and observer positioning so as not to violate this mandate is for respondents and the Nevada Secretary of State to determine. (SC).

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