Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Nevada GOP mum after voter fraud accusations backfire

Hartle

John Locher / AP

A sign directs people where to vote at a polling place during early voting in Las Vegas, Oct. 30, 2020.

Republican leaders in Nevada last fall used the story of Donald Kirk Hartle to promote their theory of a fraudulent presidential election, sending out statements and holding events to promote the tale Hartle was weaving: Someone voted using his deceased wife’s mail ballot.

Take Michael McDonald, the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, who said: “We warned Nevada was not prepared to do mail ballots. We were dismissed, mocked, and attacked yet here we are — a vote for a deceased Nevadan was counted because of the low standards Clark County put in place, and elected officials allowed for its signature-matching process.”

Well, turns out that someone who voted multiple times was Hartle himself. And the vote: for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

Hartle, 55, last week pleaded guilty to voting more than once in the same election, and as part of an agreement will serve one year of probation and a $2,000 fine.

But this time, McDonald and other Republican leaders aren’t commenting. We’ve tried to reach them for the last week for the issue they were so previously passionate about, including looking for comment from Adam Laxalt, the former Nevada Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate. Editor’s note: Laxalt hasn’t responded to the Sun in years.

A few days after the election in November — where Joe Biden edged Donald Trump by 33,000 votes in Nevada — Laxalt and Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, staged a news conference to detail their claims of fraud and using Rosemarie Hartle’s ballot as an example. The state party even posted her obituary on social media.

“I guess this proves that when you mail ballots to people who can’t vote they end up voting,” Schlapp tweeted on Nov. 17.

Despite repeated claims by Trump backers spinning election fraud theories, there has been no evidence of voter fraud as repeated lawsuits in Nevada, Arizona and other swing states have produced no signs of irregularities — well, except for Hartle. He entered his guilty plea last week, telling a judge he accepted “full responsibility for my actions and regret them.”

Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement that voter fraud is rare, “but when it happens it undercuts trust in our election system and will not be tolerated by my office. I want to stress that our office will pursue any credible allegations of voter fraud and will work to bring any offenders to justice.”

That justice came to Hartle last week.

Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny didn't hold back in her comments to Hartle in saying: “This seems to me to be a cheap political stunt that kind of backfired, and shows that our voting system actually works because you were ultimately caught.”