Nye clerk to explain how hand-count, paper ballot election will work

Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf will outline how the Nov. 8 midterm election will work, using a paper ballot and hand-count process.

He will brief Nye County commissioners at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the Pahrump Town Office.

Kampf, who became clerk in August and has repeated false claims that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, will present his plans for the election to commissioners who voted 5-0 in March to administer the election using only hand-counted paper ballots, ostensibly to reduce the chances of voter fraud.

Kampf has said he expects the county will finish hand-counting ballots between Nov. 10 and Nov. 14 with its new system.

The election won’t be conducted entirely without technology, however; electronic tabulator machines will count the ballots first, according to Kampf’s presentation included in the commissioners’ agenda packet.

Then, in batches of 50 separated by precinct, the ballots will go to a tally team of three people who each take turns counting the batch. Each talliers’ counts must match, and a verifier will also double-check each of the tallier’s vote counts. The votes will be put on a tally sheet and be totaled by precinct.

With 32,855 active voters in Nye County, Kampf estimated that if there are 26,000 votes at 80 percent voter turnout in November, there will be 520 batches of 50 ballots per batch. In a worst case scenario, a minimum of eight teams could count five batches per day, totaling 40 batches a day.

There will be a video camera live-streaming the hand count to ensure transparency, and citizens will “become poll watchers at home,” according to the presentation.

Mail ballots will be counted the same as in previous elections, and identical paper ballots will be completed by the voter at the polls. The voter will sign a signature card and the signature screen. There will be touch screens for people with special needs to use, the presentation says.

If a signature or verification fails, the staff will require identification, according to the presentation.

Contact Jessica Hill at jehill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @jess_hillyeah on Twitter.