Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman Credit: Screenshot from Clark County livestream

A Nevada judge has dismissed an effort by Donald Trump’s campaign to challenge early votes.

The Republican nominee’s campaign sued Clark County to preserve evidence surrounding the decision to extend early voting hours Friday night because of long lines at a Cardenas supermarket in Las Vegas.

During a just-concluded hearing, Trump campaign attorney David Lee asked Clark County Judge Gloria Sturman to preserve the personal information of poll workers who kept polling stations – in areas with larger populations of minority voters – open two hours past closing time.

The judge countered that once the court issued an order making the names public, “Anybody can get access to it, and I’m not doing that.

“The secretary of state is who tells us what she needs to do that investigation. It’s for her to say,” Sturman continued. “That’s not, with all due respect, for any campaign to say.”

In response to Lee’s assertions that the poll workers would not be harassed if their names were made public, the judge asked, “Do you watch Twitter?”

“I am not going to expose people who are doing their public duty helping citizens to vote,” Sturman said.

Nevada already is the site of a previous suit filed by the state Democratic Party on Oct. 30 against Trump operative Roger Stone’s Stop the Steal group, the Nevada Republican Party and Trump’s campaign.

Stop the Steal claims on its website that it has enlisted more than 3,100 observers, including 65 in Nevada, to help with exit polls on Election Day.

“It’s great that the volunteers are being reminded and that everyone will know the rules,” Amy Rose, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said in a phone interview.

“These election rules were put in place to ensure the integrity of the election. Hopefully, everyone will know what they can and can’t do.”

In their lawsuit, Nevada Democrats accused the Trump campaign of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Friday, the federal judge did not find enough evidence that the Nevada Republican Party and Trump campaign were intimidating voters to issue an injunction.

Over the weekend, Stop the Steal warned its volunteers not to speak with voters before they entered polling places, among other rules for exit polling.

Democrats have filed similar suits in five other battleground states. Federal courts have rejected the complaints in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by Democrats to review a lawsuit against Trump supporters alleging voter intimidation in Ohio.

Senior Radio Editor Cheryl Devall and Digital Editor Julia B. Chan contributed to this story.

Jennifer Gollan can be reached at jgollan@cironline.org. Follow her on Twitter: @jennifergollan.

 

Creative Commons License

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.

Jennifer Gollan

jgollan@revealnews.org

Jennifer Gollan is an award-winning reporter. Her investigation When Abusers Keep Their Guns, which exposed how perpetrators often kill their intimate partners with guns they possess unlawfully, spurred sweeping provisions in federal law that greatly expanded the power of local and state police and prosecutors to crack down on abusers with illegal firearms. The project won a 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and has been nominated for a 2022 Emmy Award.

Gollan also has reported on topics ranging from oil companies that dodge accountability for workers’ deaths to shoddy tire manufacturing practices that kill motorists. Her series on rampant exploitation and abuse of caregivers in the burgeoning elder care-home industry, Caregivers and Takers, prompted a congressional hearing and a statewide enforcement sweep in California to recover workers’ wages. Another investigation – focused on how Navy shipbuilders received billions in public money even after their workers were killed or injured on the job – led to tightened federal oversight of contractors’ safety violations.

Gollan’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Associated Press, The Guardian US and Politico Magazine, as well as on PBS NewsHour and Al Jazeera English’s “Fault Lines” program. Her honors include a national Emmy Award, a Hillman Prize for web journalism, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, a National Headliner Award, a Gracie Award and two Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing awards. Gollan is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.