Nevada county engulfed in chaos after Republicans refuse to certify election

Turmoil has engulfed Washoe County, Nevada, the home of Reno and the second-most populous area of Nevada outside the Las Vegas metropolitan area, after Republicans on the county commission refused to certify an election.

According to USA Today, the three Republican members of the commission, which make up a majority of the five seats, refused to certify the results of the primary, claiming that the recounts for candidates Mark Lawson in Washoe County Commission District 4 and Paul White in Washoe County School Board Trustee District G, both Republicans who narrowly lost, require "further investigation," in the words of Commissioner Clara Andriola.

At issue in the decision to not certify the result was a printing error in a small precinct during early voting in May, and issues with tabulation machines that caused a delay in counting — but per acting Washoe County registrar Cari-Ann Burgess, the recount did not turn up any discrepancies.

Ironically, Andriola was herself the candidate Lawson was running against. She had drawn the anger of local Republicans by consistently voting to certify elections the rest of the party disputed, but in this case she finally moved to reject the results herself.

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Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar and state Attorney General Aaron Ford, both Democrats, have stated that the commissioners have violated state law, and will be asking the state Supreme Court to order them to certify the election. "It is unacceptable that any public officer would undermine the confidence of their voters," said Aguilar.

The disputed recounts were both funded by Robert Beadles, a local businessman and GOP donor who has pushed election fraud conspiracy theories.

The Washoe County commissioners will also be responsible for certifying election results in the November presidential election, for a critical county that has historically leaned Republican but has trended left in recent years and narrowly backed Democrats in almost every statewide race since 2016. Trump's failure to hold down Democratic margins in Washoe County was a big factor in his loss in the state in 2020, and it will likely be a big focus of early vote election observers in the fall, as political observers try to forecast whether recent polls suggesting Trump has improved his standing in Nevada will bear out.