Daily Signal EXCLUSIVE: Nevada's Rejected Votes Exceeded Narrow Senate Margin in 2022, Watchdog Group Finds

Fred Lucas : Apr 3, 2023
The Daily Signal

"Mail-in ballots disenfranchise people. They get lost. They get rejected. Mail-in ballots are a problem to begin with. Automatic mail ballots are a disaster, and these Nevada numbers prove it." -J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation

[DailySignal.com] Nevada rejected a higher number of mail-in ballots in the 2022 election than the final vote margin that decided a close Senate race last year, according to an analysis obtained by The Daily Signal. (Image: Unsplash-Tiffany Tertipes)

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative election watchdog group, found that 8,036 ballots were rejected. Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto defeated Republican challenger Adam Laxalt by 7,928 votes. So, 108 more votes were rejected than the final tally that separated the two candidates.

The analysis also found that 95,556 ballots—almost 5% of those listed on the state's active voter lists—were sent to undeliverable addresses. Meanwhile, an additional 1.2 million ballots were never mailed back to election officials, according to the analysis of data from the office of Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, who was first elected in November.

"A total of 8,036 rejected ballots out of nearly 513,000 returned may not seem significant, but in this context, it is a reasonable question as to what can be done to reduce the failure rates," the legal foundation's report says. "The Silver State relies on signature verification when processing mail ballots. This means human eyes compare marks on file against return envelopes to determine which get rejected."

The report continues: "In 2022, a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist reported on how he successfully tricked signature reviewers into accepting six ballots with his signature affixed. In the 2020 election, the columnist got eight ballots accepted."

The findings do not prove—nor does the report claim—the election results would have turned out differently or that the incumbent's margin of victory would have changed if fewer ballots were rejected, if fewer were sent to bad addresses, or if more ballots were returned. It's impossible to know which candidate would have benefited if the 8,036 votes had been counted... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. Lucas is also the author of "The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left's Assault on Clean Elections."