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Inaccuracies in voting machines. Discrepancies in ballot tracking. Failing to give poll observers adequate access to ballot counting. Democrats bribing voters.
Those are claims former President Donald Trump and his allies pushed forward as evidence of voter fraud in Nevada during the 2020 presidential election.
Those claims were dismissed by judges in Nevada, and an unofficial group of political conservatives reiterated the findings in those lawsuits in a 72-page report released this month summarizing its investigations into every claim of election fraud presented by Trump and his supporters, presenting a case that the 2020 election was not stolen.
“Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election” included reports about each of the battleground states where Trump alleged fraud, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and examined each claim of election fraud.
The report says that the members of the group, made up of judges and former senators, were “deeply troubled” by efforts to overturn or discredit the results of the 2020 election. The authors are Judges Thomas B. Griffith, J. Michael Luttig, Michael W. McConnell and Theodore B. Olson, former U.S. Sens. John Danforth and Gordon H. Smith, lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg and David Hoppe, a politician and lobbyist.
“Efforts to thwart the People’s choice are deeply undemocratic and unpatriotic,” the report says. “Claims that an election was stolen, or that the outcome resulted from fraud, are deadly serious and should be made only on the basis of real and powerful evidence.”
The report says Biden’s victory is explained by a political landscape that was much different in 2020 than when Trump won in 2016. Trump’s reelection campaign occurred during a pandemic that caused a “severe downturn in the global economy,” the report says.
There was also a large electorate that voted for Republican candidates down the ballot but not for Trump, the report found.
Trump and his supporters did not present enough evidence that would result in a change in the election results, the report says. The authors, however, said the election processes were not perfect.
“States should continue to do what they can do to eliminate opportunities for election fraud and to punish it when it occurs,” the report says. “But there is absolutely no evidence of fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election on the magnitude necessary to shift the result in any state, let alone the nation as a whole.”
There was no fraud that changed the outcome in even a single precinct, the report concluded.
“Our review of each of these Trump charges affirms that the 2020 election was administered by trained professionals who reaffirmed their established track record for fairness,” the report says.
Changes made because of the COVID-19 pandemic may have created “possibilities” for fraud, the report says, but there isn’t any evidence that those possibilities “materialized in reality,” the report says. The changes also increased voter participation.
Election procedures have been put to the test in every presidential election since at least 2000, the report says, and they have been found to be “sound and reliable” in every instance.
According to the report, Trump’s legal representatives showed up in court or state proceedings empty-handed after making claims of wrongdoing, and then “returned to their rallies and media campaigns to repeat the same unsupported claims.”
“Even now, 20 months after the election, a period in which Trump’s supporters have been energetically scouring every nook and cranny for proof that the election was stolen, they come up empty,” the report says. “Claims are made, trumpeted in sympathetic media, and accepted as truthful by many patriotic Americans. But on objective examination they have fallen short, every time.”
10 cases brought in Nevada
In Nevada, the report says, Trump and his supporters brought 10 cases with 28 counts challenging the election results. They were unsuccessful in proving fraud or irregularities sufficient to overturn the election results in any court or investigation.
Biden won Nevada by more than 30,000 votes, receiving 50.1% of the vote and Trump receiving 47.7%. It is similar to the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton won Nevada by about 27,000 votes.
“Biden’s win in Nevada, like Clinton’s, is attributable to a reliable base of Democrats in Southern Nevada,” the report says. “He performed far better with Latina women than Latino men and outperformed Trump with independents.”
The report also mentioned Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske office’s investigation into claims of election misconduct. The investigation spanned more than 125 hours of time and did not turn up any evidence of widespread voter fraud.
In March 2021, the Nevada Republican Party delivered an additional 3,000 complaints to Cegavske, and in April 2021, she issued a response finding that most of those complaints were based on a misunderstanding of how voter registration records were created and kept, according to the report. None involved widespread fraud.
The conservatives’ report also included information about The Associated Press’ review of Trump’s claims of voter fraud in Nevada, which found no evidence of widespread fraud.
Local election officials also identified fewer than 100 potential fraud cases, representing less than 0.3% of Biden’s margin of victory, the report says.
A Nevada court found that plaintiffs failed to offer sufficient evidence to support their claims that officials counted ballots cast by nonresidents and incorrectly authenticated ballots in sufficient numbers to affect the outcome, the report says.
“We emphasize that the court’s finding was that Trump and his supporters failed even to offer sufficient evidence,” the report says. “In other words, when given a chance to prove their claims in court, they came up short.”
Some voters in Clark County also alleged that election officials failed to give observers adequate access to ballot counting, according to the report. The court invited them to make their case despite concluding that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring such claims. After evidentiary hearings, two different state court judges dismissed the claims, finding no evidence that election officials had done anything wrong.
Other lawsuits alleged that the use of the Agilis Ballot Sorting System led to fraud and malfunctions that affected the election results.
No court found evidence to support any of these allegations, the report says. One claim in Clark County alleging that the use of Agilis machines was unlawful was also dismissed by a state court,which ruled there was no evidence of any Agilis errors or inaccuracies.
Assembly Bill 4 in August 2020 changed Nevada’s election procedures to accommodate voting during the pandemic. Plaintiffs like the Trump Campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party alleged that those changes led to fraud. Their lawsuit was dismissed, and both federal and state courts rejected claims thatthe changes treated in-person voting differently than mail-in ballots.
There were also claims in Nevada about illicit voter drives and bribing of voters. Plaintiffs alleged that state officials conducted voting drives and offered T-shirts in exchange for voting, and another lawsuit alleged that there were voter drives targeting Native Americans that had depicted Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris in promotional materials, “unfairly swaying the election,” the report says. But the state court dismissed the claims and found no evidence of voter manipulation.
“It is not unusual for campaigns to challenge various aspects of election administration, which are properly resolved in court prior to the election,” the report says. “They provide no basis for disqualifying votes oroverturning results after the election.”
“We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election,” the report says, “and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our Nation.”
Lawsuits, results
The conservatives’ report documented multiple lawsuits alleging election fraud by Nevada Republicans in the 2020 elections. Here’s a sampling:
• Lawsuit: In Kraus v. Cegavske, plaintiffs alleged that the Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria failed to submit a timely election procedure plan to the secretary of the state and challenged the adequacy of observer procedures.
Result: The state court determined that plaintiffs lacked standing, as the registrar did submit a permissible plan. Plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court but voluntarily dismissed the appeal a week later.
• Lawsuit: In Elections Integrity Project of Nevada v. Cegavske, the Election Integrity Project and a voter alleged that Assembly Bill 4, in which all voters were sent a mail ballot, led to widespread fraud by allowing universal mail-in ballots.
Result: The state court held a hearing and found there was insufficient evidence that instituting the bill would dilute votes or lead to incorrect results. The Nevada Supreme agreed the plaintiffs failed to provide any “concrete evidence” that illegitimate votes would be counted under the law.
• Lawsuit: In Stokke v. Cegavske, candidates and voters alleged that use of the Agilis software system violated state and federal law.
Result: The plaintiffs later dismissed the lawsuit.
• Lawsuit: In Becker v. Gloria, candidates alleged that Clark County officials flouted state election law by “flooding” the county with untraceable ballots and using the Agilis mail-ballot processing machines, rather than hand-verifying signatures.
Result: That lawsuit was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and on the merits, as there wasn’t any evidence offered, according to the report.
• Lawsuit: In Trump v. Cegavske, before the election, the Trump campaign, Republican National Committee and state Republican Party alleged that changes to the state’s election procedures accepting ballots received after Election Day violated federal law.
Result: The judge dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing.
• Lawsuit: In Rodimer v. Gloria, U.S. House of Representatives candidate Dan Rodimer alleged that Clark County officials’ use of the Agilis machine to verify signatures violated state law, and the candidate sought invalidation of all votes verified by the system and the new election.
Result: The state court dismissed that lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction.
• Lawsuit: In Becker v. Cannizzaro, candidate April Becker sought a new election against Nicole Cannizzaro for a seat in the Nevada Senate. Becker had beendefeated by 631 votes in 2020. Becker (now running for the U.S. House of Representatives) contended that the Clark County Registrar of Voters found discrepancies in ballot tracking, used the Agilis system and should have moved certain voters to the inactive list.
Result: The plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the case two days later.
• Lawsuit: In Marchant v. Gloria, U.S. House of Representatives candidate Jim Marchant (now running for Secretary of State) alleged that Clark County officials’ use of the Agilis system to verify signatures violated state law requiring that verification be conducted by a human.
Result: The state court dismissed the case because of lack of jurisdiction, and it also wrote that the claim would fail because the plaintiff failed to show ballot loss or destruction, according to the report.
• Lawsuit: In Donald J. Trump for President v. Gloria, the Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party sought injunctive relief from Clark County, asking that the polling locations affected by voting machine malfunctions stay open until 8 p.m.
Result: The state court agreed and issued an order to keep the polls open until 8.
• Lawsuit: In Law v. Whitmer, presidential electors for Trump alleged that there were widespread malfunctions with electronic voting systems and that voting drives encouraged Native Americans to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, for president and vice president, respectively, by depicting them in promotional material. It also alleged that the Agilis machines resulted in an equal protection violation. The plaintiffs asked that Trump be declared the election winner.
Result: A state court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, but it also ruled that there was no proof of machine malfunctions, improper votes or vote manipulation. TheNevada Supreme Court agreed with the lower court ruling.