Overwhelmed election officials in Nevada say that they have been flooded by thousands of mail-in ballots, and that it may take several days to count the votes and upload results.
Last year, the state began requiring that mail-in ballots be sent to every registered voter. While ballots must be postmarked by Election Day, they can be counted if they arrive as late as Saturday.
Elections officials have emphasized the need for patience and have not offered predictions on how quickly they will be able to offer tallies.
Jamie Rodriguez, the interim registrar of voters in Washoe County, said she was expecting roughly 16,000 mail-in ballots to arrive on Election Day. She said that those votes would not be counted until Thursday because poll workers were so behind.
“Understand that whatever results posted tonight, if there are close races, there are definitely still a large number of votes to be counted,” Ms. Rodriguez said on Tuesday night.
And even the results that have come in came slowly. Nevada does not post its results until the last voter in the state casts a ballot, and the polls did not officially close until after 9 p.m. local time. Tallies did not start coming in until late Tuesday, after many contests on the East Coast had already been called.
Long waits and continuous warnings from elections officials did not prevent the candidates in a competitive race for a Nevada Senate seat from projecting confidence about their standing. Early Wednesday morning, Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, was slightly behind her Republican opponent, Adam Laxalt.
“We have a lot of our votes coming in all across the state, yet to be tabulated,” Mr. Laxalt said on election night at a party in Las Vegas. “We are going to win this race.”
“We had people voting in the snow and then the rain because they want a better Nevada and a better America,” he added. “Unfortunately, we’re in for a long night and maybe a few days into this week as all the votes are tabulated.”
Ms. Cortez Masto was also upbeat, but made the situation clear: “We won’t have results for several days.”
The lag means Nevadans will also have to wait for results in other competitive state races, including the governor’s race between the incumbent, Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, and his Republican challenger, Joe Lombardo. Mr. Lombardo held a narrow lead early Wednesday morning.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
