Washoe County, Nevada official explains why cameras on ballot counting went dark overnight

Officials in Nevada's Washoe County are providing explanations on why livestream cameras monitoring vote-counting went dark from Wednesday night to Thursday morning, saying there was a loss in connectivity that staffers didn't notice until they returned to work. 

Washoe County spokesperson Bethany Drysdale told the Reno Gazette Journal in an email the cameras stopped monitoring because a livestream computer application lost connection with the cameras. 

The outage was from 11:24 p.m. Wednesday until about 8 a.m. Thursday.

Drysdale said all staffers had left for the night, about 60 minutes before the outage, and did not return until until 7 a.m. They restored the connection about 53 minutes later, she also said.

Washoe includes Reno, the second-largest city in Nevada, where votes are still being counted.

Drysdale also said the cameras are "courtesy" cameras – not security or surveillance-grade ones – and that they intermittently lose connection with the application.

On the question of how can voters be assured the ballots were secured during the blackout, Drysdale said the county security administrator has reviewed the building's security cameras, which show the parking garage, the hallway between the garage and the entry doors to the Registrar’s Office.

She also said the administrator has affirmed that nobody entered the ballot room or Registrar's Office during the time that the courtesy livestream was down and that tech officials are working to put that footage into a viewable file to be made public, the newspaper also reports.

In addition, a review of logs for staff badges/electronic door keys reportedly show nobody entered the area during the blackout.