Why Are Nevada’s Election Results Taking So Long to Count?

A lot of people are wondering: What is taking Nevada so long to count its election results?

The state only offers six electoral votes, but with Arizona and Pennsylvania still hanging in the balance, those six votes could be crucial, especially since networks have now called Wisconsin and Michigan for former Vice President Joe Biden.

As of Thursday, November 5, Biden retained a small lead in Nevada. State election officials provided an update on the situation on Thursday.

These are the current Nevada presidential election results courtesy of Heavy’s partners at Decision Desk HQ:

Click here for the dynamic elections data.

Here’s what you need to know:

Full Nevada Election Results Won’t Be Known Until November 12

Joe Gloria, the Clark County registrar of voters, held a news conference Thursday in which he revealed that all votes in Nevada would be counted by November 12.

Most of the remaining votes are drop-off ballots or were sent in the mail, Gloria said. He gave the following breakdown of the more than 63,000 ballots that were still waiting to be counted in Nevada as of Thursday:

— 34,743 ballots that were dropped off at drop-off locations

— 4,208 ballots that the U.S. Postal Service had delivered

— 24,311 ballots that still need processing because processing was suspended when officials had to switch to getting ready for the election

Gloria said that 51,000 of the 63,262 uncounted ballots would be counted by Friday morning at 10 a.m. local time.

Gloria said there are an additional unknown number of ballots that could still arrive in the mail — ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive by Tuesday — and there are also a little over 60,000 uncounted provisional ballots. Counting those is delayed due to a verification process to make sure none of those people already voted, he said. “We need to make that verification,” he said. “Staff is working on those ballots to make sure the voter was eligible to cast that provisional ballot.”

He said Nevada also “has a group of voters who are ID required.” The deadline for those voters to provide an ID is 5 p.m. Friday.

“The U.S. mail will continue to deliver,” he added.

In addition, there is a process in Nevada whereby people who made mistakes, such as not signing their ballot, have until November 12 to cure the ballot.

He stressed, “We are anticipating to have the bulk of our mail ballots received by Saturday or Sunday. We won’t completely until November 12. We are not aware of any important ballots that are being processed. It’s important for the entire country to understand mailed ballots are very new in the state of Nevada. Our process runs a little bit slower.”

He said officials are making sure “our data is being updated. We need to make sure to prevent people from voting twice in the system. Our goal here in Clark County is not to count fast. We want to make sure we’re being accurate. Results in Nevada are important to the whole country. There are many steps in the process.”

According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Biden was up an average 3.6% in the Nevada polls going into Election Day. But the polls have been notoriously wrong throughout the country.

Last week, Vice President Mike Pence was in Reno. “We’re just five days away from another great victory all the way across Nevada and America,” he told the crowd, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.

Early Voting Showed Trump Still Had a Chance in Nevada

GettyBiden vs. Trump

The Review-Journal reported that early voting trends showed that Trump still had a chance ahead of November 3. “43,600 more Democrats than Republicans had voted. The breakdown by party affiliation was 40.6% Democrat, 35.8% Republican and 23.6% independents and third parties,” the newspaper reported.

However, the newspaper reported that the number of registered voters in Nevada has grown 20% since 2016, and early voting trends should be strong for Democrats if Trump is to have no chance.

Hillary Clinton narrowly won Nevada in 2016, by only 2.4% or 27,000 votes.

Jason Miller, Trump campaign advisor, told Fox News, “Even if for some reason we didn’t have Arizona, we could pick off Nevada, a place that our modeling shows that we’re going to win on Tuesday, as well as Michigan, and that would put President Trump over the top.”

Democrats enjoyed a blue surge in the 2018 midterms, flipping a Senate seat in Nevada to their column, according to The Associated Press.

Candidates have to appeal to people from diverse backgrounds to win Nevada.

According to the AP, Nevada is a very diverse state, and about one-third of its electorate are Latino voters. That ethnic group has been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, and handling of the virus has been a stark point of contrast between Biden and Trump. In addition, according to the AP, Biden has enjoyed union support in the state tied to the casino industry.

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