Nevada county refuses to certify results of two local primaries

Local officials in Washoe County, Nevada, voted Tuesday against certifying the results of two recounted primary races, after a prominent election denier claimed the results were fraudulent and demanded hand counts of the results.

Robert Beadles, a supporter of former President Donald Trump who has promoted election conspiracy theories, spent $150,000 to recount three local races in Washoe County’s June primary. One candidate later withdrew the request for a recount, but officials spent days re-tabulating the thousands of votes cast and found a two-vote difference — one vote in each race — that had no effect on the significant margin of victory in the two remaining races.

But at a contentious Washoe County Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday, dozens of people spoke for and against certification, with many of the latter demanding a recount by hand instead of by machine.

Experts have long found that hand-counting ballots is more expensive, more error-prone, and more time-consuming than using machine tabulators.

It’s unclear what will happen to the two primaries in question — for a nonpartisan school board position and a Republican county commissioner position — or the county commissioners who declined to certify the election results.

A spokesman for Washoe County, Bethany Drysdale, said county officials are deferring to Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, for what comes next. Aguilar's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Washoe County, home to Reno, is the second-largest county in Nevada with nearly a half million residents, and has been a hotbed of voter fraud claims despite little evidence. It is also expected to again serve as a key swing in the battleground state in this year's