Clark County with thousands of uncounted votes as nation eyes Nevada Senate race

Officials in Nevada’s most populous county say they are still processing thousands of ballots that came in through the mail and drop boxes, telling reporters Wednesday that it will likely take days to get to a final tally.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said the state has just over 14,700 ballots to count from drop-off boxes on Monday and USPS pick up of mail ballots on Tuesday. On top of that, the county has around 12,700 ballots from Wednesday picked up by USPS that still need to be processed, which Gloria said will likely happen in the coming days.

As counting continues in Clark County, which contains Las Vegas, control of the U.S. Senate is still to be determined.

A tight race between incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican candidate Adam Laxalt, the state’s former attorney general, is still too close to call. With 75% of the vote in as of Wednesday afternoon, Laxalt had a slight lead with 49.9% of the vote. Cortez Masto trailed slightly with 47.2% of the vote.

Cortez Masto was down nearly 22,600 votes compared to Laxalt as of Wednesday afternoon, but with thousands of votes left to be counted in Clark County, the tally could still swing. More than 594,400 ballots had been counted in Clark County as of Wednesday afternoon.

Gloria told reporters Wednesday that ballots casted in-person in Clark County on Election Day are already in the system, minus provisional ballots. He said that validation of provisional ballots will continue on a daily basis, adding that the county has seen 5,555 provisional ballots come through the early voting and Election Day period.

Gloria also said nearly 9,600 voters had been added to a “cure” list, meaning their signature could not be mated to the one on file. Of those, 5,396 people had not cured their ballot as of Wednesday, Gloria added.

This is the first election Nevada has utilized universal mail-in voting, where every registered voter in the state received a ballot in the mail. Gloria said he believed voter turnout was “good for a midterm.”

“We definitely got more Election Day turnout than we did in 2020 [general election], but the dynamics are so much different now that we have mail ballots going out to all voters,” Gloria said.