Eric Neugeboren, The Nevada Independent

RFK Jr. refiles Nevada ballot petition after ‘United States’ typo

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign refiled its petition to land on the Nevada ballot on Tuesday after it misspelled “United States.”

In an email to state officials, campaign attorney Paul Rossi submitted the revised petition because “we do not want ballot access to be rejected because of an typo” (sic). The petition said Kennedy and attorney Nicole Shanahan were running for president and vice president of the “Unites States.”

In an interview Thursday, Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said he did not know whether the refiling was necessary, but he’s “glad they’re being proactive.”

The campaign’s first petition — which received enough signatures — was deemed invalid because it did not list a running mate. Kennedy’s campaign filed a lawsuit to overturn that decision, but filed a new petition that was approved last week, which included the typo.

The campaign must gather at least 10,095 signatures by July 5.

Trump campaign sues Nevada, alleges counting of non-postmarked mail ballots

This story was originally published by The Nevada Independent.

The Trump campaign has filed its third lawsuit challenging election procedures in Nevada, now alleging that state elections officials are counting non-postmarked mail ballots after Election Day, without providing clear evidence of such a practice occurring.

The suit, announced Monday and filed in Carson City District Court by lawyers also representing the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Nevada GOP, hinges on April testimony from Mark Wlaschin, the deputy secretary of state for elections, who said the office accepts and counts ballots received in the mail up to three days after Election Day, even if it does not have a clear postmark.

State law requires all mail ballots to be postmarked by Election Day in order to be counted, but allows for mail ballots that have a postmark with a date that “cannot be determined” and received within the three days following Election Day to be counted. The suit alleges that the state is too broadly interpreting this law by also counting received mail ballots that are not postmarked at all.

“It is therefore possible, if not probable, that mail ballots deposited in the mail after election day could arrive at mail-ballot processing facilities within the three-day deadline, and under Deputy Secretary Wlaschin’s erroneous legal interpretation, those untimely ballots would be counted if they do not bear a postmark,” the lawsuit states.

The suit requests that a judge order the state to not count any ballots that lack a postmark received after Election Day.

An RNC press release also said “we have discovered that Nevada election officials routinely count non-postmarked mail ballots received after Election Day,” but again did not provide any examples.

A spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit, but provided a memo that the office sent to local election officials last week about the interpretation of that state law.

In the memo, Wlaschin wrote that mail ballots that have been received with “no visible postmark should be interpreted to have an indeterminate postmark,” and that those ballots can be counted if received within three days of Election Day. He also wrote that the office will seek to codify the guidance as a state regulation after the election cycle.

This marks the third lawsuit that the RNC and Trump campaign have filed in Nevada this election cycle.

In early May, the groups sued to block the Nevada law that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted up to four days after Election Day, alleging it violates federal law because it does not conform to the Election Day deadline established by the federal government. The same parties filed a separate federal lawsuit in March alleging serious errors in the state’s voter roll maintenance.

Updated on 6/4/24 at 7:06 p.m. to clarify when the secretary of state's offie will seek to codify guidance on non-postmarked ballots as a state regulation.

GOP minority outreach centers in Nevada quietly shuttered after 2022 election cycle

This article originally appeared in The Nevada Independent.

This article has been translated to Spanish. You can read it here.

In 2020 and 2022, the Republican National Committee (RNC) and Nevada GOP made a well-publicized push to attract voters of color by opening several minority outreach centers in the Las Vegas Valley and across other swing states.

The groups touted the venues — which included a Black American Community Center and a Black Voices for Trump office in North Las Vegas and a Hispanic Voices for Trump outpost in East Las Vegas — as part of a “long game” of attracting the support of minority communities that historically leaned toward Democrats. The centers were often used to host political rallies, dances and other community events, with some even helping with preparation for the U.S. citizenship test.

While it’s not unusual for campaign offices to operate for just a few key months, the RNC had billed the venues as more permanent fixtures in the community that would outlast an election cycle.

“This is a long-term commitment the RNC is making to communities to show that we are a party that represents every American,” then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said at the May 2022 opening of the Asian American Pacific Islander center in Las Vegas’ Chinatown.

But a Nevada Independent analysis found that those four locations are closed and now host other businesses. The Nevada GOP did not respond to multiple requests for comment about why the centers were closed or if they plan to re-open them.

The AAPI outreach center in Spring Valley is now a vape shop called “Vape Ape,” which an employee told an Indy reporter had opened in the past year. The former Hispanic Voices for Trump location in East Las Vegas is now a Spanish-speaking church, and a Black Voices for Trump outpost has been replaced by a chiropractic practice and a small business selling refrigerated trailers and boxes.

With the exception of a North Las Vegas RNC center-turned-boba shop, community center locations remain listed on an active page on the Nevada GOP’s website, although the page is not accessible via the site’s homepage and it does not note the closure of the centers.

Federal Election Commission campaign records show that the RNC spent nearly $140,000 on rent in Nevada in the 2022 election cycle; through the end of February 2024, it had made no payments for rent in the Silver State. Similarly, the Nevada Republican Central Committee spent more than $33,000 on rent in the prior campaign cycle but has only rented out lists and rooms for their February presidential caucus thus far this cycle.

An RNC spokesperson told The Nevada Independent that Latino engagement efforts by the committee and the Trump campaign have already begun in Nevada, but did not specify what those efforts entailed. The spokesperson added that President Joe Biden’s support among minority communities is dropping, citing recent polling showing fracturing among the diverse coalition that elected him four years ago.

“Without sharing our strategy with Democrats through the media, we have the message, the operation and the money to propel President Trump to victory,” Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

The GOP’s quiet closures of these centers nationwide were first reported in January in The Messenger, with GOP officials at the time saying they planned to reopen a Hispanic community outreach center in Las Vegas. But with McDaniel’s departure earlier this year and replacement of the RNC’s top brass with allies of former President Donald Trump, conflicting reports have surfaced over the future of the remaining centers.

The situation presents a dramatic split-screen from the Biden campaign, which, in recent weeks, has opened offices across the Las Vegas Valley as part of its effort to court minority voters in the Silver State.

In March, the campaign opened offices in North Las Vegas and southeast Las Vegas, parts of the city with high Black and Asian American populations, respectively. And last week, the campaign opened an office in East Las Vegas, a heavily Latino community.

The Trump campaign, meanwhile, has yet to announce any campaign office openings in Nevada. While they coordinate their campaign with the Nevada GOP, by this point in 2020, Trump campaign officials had opened an office in Las Vegas.

When Biden and Trump faced off in 2020, Biden won Hispanic voters in Nevada by a 26-percentage-point margin, Asian American voters by 29 points and Black voters by 62 points, according to exit polling.

In the 2022 midterms, predictions that Hispanic voters would move toward Republicans did not come to fruition in Nevada. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) improved on Biden’s margins with Hispanic and Black voters in her successful re-election bid, while she had a 14-point advantage among Asian Americans — a worse margin than Biden had among those voters two years earlier.