Jim Marchant, Republican candidate for Nevada Congressional District 4, speaks during a Republican Watch Party at the South Point on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020.
Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022 | 2 a.m.
In their own words
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.: “Our electoral processes have been proven safe and secure by the courts in Nevada, and I am confident in our Republican secretary of state, who protected our elections and was censured by the Nevada Republican Party for doing so.”
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev.: “I am concerned ... about outside groups seeking to interfere in the election process by intimidating poll workers and election officials, as we saw in 2020. Poll workers should be able to do their jobs and voters should be able to cast their ballots without fear or pressure.”
Elizabeth Mercedes Krause (running to unseat Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev.): “Unlike voter suppression, election fraud is rare and often accidental. There is no evidence of systemic voter fraud in the 2020 election. After nearly two years of recounts and court cases, the bottom line is that claims of meaningful voter fraud remain unsubstantiated. The American people spoke.”
Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev.: “Regardless of the outcome, I will accept the results of my election because I value the voices of the people that I represent. Meanwhile, my opponent filed multiple lawsuits to overturn the will of the voters in her own race in 2020. Not only do I believe that there was not enough meaningful voter fraud in 2020 to sway the outcome, but it was proven in the court of law.”
Cisco Aguilar (Democratic candidate for secretary of state): “I don’t have to win this race because of the 2020 election, I have to win it because of the 2024 election. Nevadans deserve the right to vote for a president and be confident the winner is fairly elected. Jim Marchant has refused to say he wouldn’t send false electors to Washington if he’s in office. For this system to work, it needs trust. I’m running to be a secretary of state every Nevadan can trust, no matter how they voted.”
Jim Marchant (GOP candidate for secretary of state): “I don’t know (if there was meaningful voter fraud) and truly no one does; our attempts to audit the election machines have been constantly shut down.”
Stavros Anthony (GOP candidate for lieutenant governor): “Don’t know since voter fraud allegations were never investigated.”
Mark Robertson (GOP candidate for Congressional District 1): “I believe we should make it easy to vote and difficult to cheat. I agree with the 85% of Americans who think we should require voter ID. I would stop the very expensive and unnecessary practice of universal mail-in ballots. I would also like to eliminate third-party ballot harvesting, which makes it too easy for dishonest people to commit fraud.”
Among nine Republicans running for some of Nevada’s highest-profile positions, six either did not respond, declined to participate or gave deflective answers to a questionnaire sent by the Sun asking if they would accept the results of the Nov. 8 midterm election.
By comparison, each of the Democrats they are running against responded to our questionnaire, all saying that elections are secure and they would accept the outcome.
The split highlights a reluctance by some conservatives to commit to democratic norms since former President Donald Trump falsely asserted that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.
The Sun sent questionnaires to candidates at the end of last month running for U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state. The questions were:
• Will you accept the results of the 2022 election regardless of the outcome?
• Do you believe there was enough meaningful voter fraud in the 2020 election to sway its outcome?
• Are there any security concerns surrounding the 2022 election you believe could sway the outcome?
Those who did not respond to multiple requests include gubernatorial contender Joe Lombardo, who said during a debate last week that there was likely a “modicum” of fraud in the 2020 race but not enough to sway its outcome. Lombardo typically doesn’t respond to the Sun’s requests.
Many Nevada Republicans touted theories after the 2020 presidential election that mail-in ballots were submitted fraudulently, but Nevada election officials spent more than 125 hours thoroughly investigating the claims and found no evidence to support widespread fraud.
Some feel Republicans who aren’t victorious next month will follow a similar strategy of filing lawsuits with inaccurate claims. And, just like the presidential election, when the nation tuned in waiting for Nevada ballots to be counted — giving Biden a roughly 30,000-vote win over Trump here and enough electoral votes to win the election — all eyes will again be on the Silver State for a Senate race.
The showdown between Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto and the Republican challenger, former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, could determine which party has the majority in the Senate. Polls indicate it’s going to be a close race.
The Laxalt camp didn’t answer our questionnaire directly.
In a statement, Laxalt campaign spokesman Brian Freimuth told the Sun, “We have answered this question countless times from your publication since August of 2021,” referring to when Laxalt, and who also served as co-chair to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign in Nevada, announced his candidacy.
While Laxalt wouldn’t respond to our questions, his past actions indicate where he stands.
He filed numerous lawsuits after the presidential election attempting to stop the counting of ballots in Clark County in a coordinated effort with Trump loyalists in other states. All of the lawsuits were thrown out in Nevada.
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Cortez Masto said those efforts to overturn the election results helped spur the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in which five people died. Rioters hoped to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.
“Laxalt basically said if he loses this election, it’s because it’s stolen,” Cortez Masto said. “(He) is out there peddling conspiracies and lies, and it is important for the truth to come out. In this age, voters deserved to be informed.”
U.S. House hopefuls Sam Peters in the 4th Congressional District and April Becker in the 3rd Congressional District also didn’t respond and have long been on record echoing some of Trump’s debunked claims.
Rep Mark Amodei, who has represented Northern Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District since 2011 and is the lone Republican in Nevada’s federal delegation, said in an emailed response, “I voted to certify the 2020 election, and I appreciate the Nevadans who voted for me by a 60,000-vote margin. Have a nice day.”
The campaign for Sigal Chattah, an attorney running for attorney general, declined to comment. Other Republicans, including secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant, lieutenant governor hopeful Stavros Anthony and Mark Robertson — who is looking to unseat Rep. Dina Titus in the 1st Congressional District — all said they would accept the election results regardless of the outcome.
Marchant, though, is a noted election denier who participated in a fake elector scheme Dec. 14, 2020, staged by Republican leaders in Carson City. They touted themselves “brave electors” standing up for what is right by casting their electoral votes for Trump.
Republicans in a handful of states went through a similar forged and coordinated process — all with the same misleading and potentially criminal logic. The Nevada Republican Party sent the document to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Nevada’s real electors had already certified the state’s election in a remote ceremony, awarding all six of the state’s electoral votes to Biden.
“Generally, blue states are making it easier to vote, red states are making it more difficult to vote,” said David Damore, chair of the political science department at UNLV. “Twenty years ago, this was largely seen as an administrative process. But now it’s not.”
Paired with Trump’s lie, conservatives in several states have shown skepticism accepting new technology like vote tabulation machines and the transition from most of the electorate voting on Election Day to casting ballots early or via mail, Damore said.
But constant change in voting demographics — in which older, white Americans continue to make up less of the electorate — has spurred fears of “status loss” that many mainstream conservatives have seized on to energize supporters and pass laws making it difficult to reach the ballot box, Damore said.
Things like universal mail voting and same-day voter registration were designed to make it easier and encourage more participation, Damore said.
“But it’s generally not seen that way,” he said.“The U.S. is so tethered to its electoral schedule and processes, and any changes to that are seen as being pushed for nefarious reasons.”
Biden beat Trump in Nevada by 33,596 of the 1.4 million votes cast, according to Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office. Cegavske, a Republican, was censured by the Nevada Republican Party last April for her role in certifying the results of the 2020 election.
Cegavske, whose term expires in January, has repeatedly reiterated that there simply was no evidence indicating widespread fraud. Her office stated as much again when contacted for this story.
The wheels might already be in motion for her office to face more challenges from Republicans.
Days after officially announcing his candidacy, Laxalt told radio host Wayne Allyn Root he planned to assemble a team to “come up with a full plan, do our best to try to secure this election, get as many observers as we can, and file lawsuits early, if there are lawsuits we can file to try to tighten up the election,” according to the Associated Press. In March, The New York Times obtained leaked audio of Laxalt telling reporters he was “vetting outside groups to help in establish election observer teams and map out a litigation strategy.”
On Sept. 20, the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against Clark County for “repeatedly refusing to meet basic standards of election transparency,” alleging it violated the state’s open records law by failing to disclose the names and party affiliation of poll workers who worked the June primaries and upcoming general election.
The county agreed Wednesday to provide the committee a roster for all early voting and general election polling locations, including manual signature verification and counting board teams — which will include party affiliation and job assignments for all poll workers at each voting precinct, according to a filing in the Eighth Judicial District Court obtained by the Sun.
In return, the committee agreed not to seek the names of the poll workers, according to the filing.
Such efforts are the latest in Republican scrutiny over how elections nationwide are conducted, Damore said. News reports from across the country have surfaced since 2020 detailing threats to local election officials, ranging from city and county clerks to volunteer poll workers.
“I think it’s a sad sign of our times,” Damore said. “And a lot of it is that people don’t really understand the mechanics of the process, and they assume the worst of it. You saw that last time in Nevada — it’s the first time we had done mail voting. In particular, Clark County isn’t set up to do mail voting, it’s set up for early voting. And because it took so long to get the final votes counted, that sort of fed into all those suspicions.”
In a statement to the Sun before Wednesday’s district court ruling came out, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin said shielding election workers from harassment is “one of the single most important aspects” in protecting the electoral process.
“The integrity of state and county election officials must remain intact and is integral to the functioning of our Republic,” Wlaschin said. “Voters need to trust that their ballots are accurately tabulated in accordance with state and federal law as anything otherwise will further attrite confidence in this sacred process. Accurate results of every election, no matter if it is a small municipal election or a presidential election, are a cornerstone of this process.”
