Voters in Pahrump, Nevada, experienced significant delays on Election Day, with wait times extending far beyond what is typically expected. The Bob Ruud Community Center, Pahrump’s sole polling site, saw lines that wrapped around the building throughout the day. These lengthy queues resulted in waits that lasted until late into the evening, well past 7 p.m. cut-off for joining the line. Andy Williams, a local resident, endured the three-hour wait, seeing it as a necessary part of civic participation, stating, “I think everybody wanted to turn out and vote because it’s such a tight election,” as reported by
8 News Now
.
The cause of the bottleneck has been a topic of mixed messaging. Arnold Knightly, a spokesperson for Nye County, pushed back against claims of insufficient resources. According to a statement obtained by
8 News Now
, Knightly attributed the delays to “the same-day registration of 174 people at the Pahrump polling location” and emphasized that “The Clerk does not believe the polling place in anywhere in the county was understaffed, including Pahrump.”
Contrastingly, ACLU of Nevada representatives reported incidents that paint a different picture. Jacob Smith, an ACLU of Nevada staff attorney, recounted to
8 News Now
that there were two instances where the polling site ran out of paper ballots, causing voters to switch to one of the three available voting machines temporarily – a move that seemed to hasten the line. The contention was further cemented by Athar Haseebullah with the ACLU of Nevada, who told
Channel 13
, “They were insisting that folks use paper ballots. Let me tell you right now, they ran out of the paper ballots that they were using so now they’re going to funnel people into the voting machines.”
Discrepancies in the management of Election Day resources have raised concerns about the integrity of the voting process. Smith noted that while “all the poll workers worked hard with everything they were given,” delays like these are likely to recur without a sufficient number of machines and the continuation of an “antiquated system,” as noted by
8 News Now
. Additionally, the ballots had to be driven 150 miles north to Tonopah to be counted, contributing to the delay in releasing election results—a situation that already draws national scrutiny to Nevada, according to Haseebullah. The most recent report shows that 16,525 votes have been counted as of Wednesday, with county officials still tallying the results.
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