Nevada attorney general denounces elections lawsuits

CARSON CITY — Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford offered a sharp rebuke of the legal challenges levied against the state’s elections brought by President Donald Trump and the Republican party, saying that they’ve yet to provide any evidence of fraud.

Ford, a Democrat, said that the unproven claims of voter fraud from the president and his Republican allies, which so far have been rejected by state and federal courts, are only being made in order to undermine the integrity of the state’s election process “because they can’t accept the results.”

“Those who are pursuing these tactics, I will call them what they are. They’re saboteurs,” Ford said during a press call Wednesday hosted by the Voter Protection Program.

Ford also had stern words for Utah Republican Attorney General Sean Reyes, who said in a statement Monday that he observed “voting irregularities” while in Nevada over the weekend, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Ford called Reyes’ move a “disrespectful slap in the face,” and said that Reyes has not returned phone calls or texts.

And he had a request for his colleague in the neighboring state.

“I would ask that he mind his business, frankly,” Ford said.

Trump’s campaign and Republicans in the state have sued state or county election officials in Nevada four times since late October, with their only success coming when a court ordered 30 polling locations to stay open an extra hour on Election Day after technology issues delayed their opening times.

In the other cases, judges have rejected the Republicans’ attempts to stop, slow or change the processing of ballots at either the state or county level.

“There is no evidence that any vote that should lawfully be counted has or will not be counted. There is no evidence that any vote that should lawfully not be counted has been or will be counted,” Carson City Judge James Wilson wrote in a ruling issued last week.

Ford said that it is disappointing to see some former Nevada elected officials alleging claims of fraud without providing any evidence to back it up, although he did not name anyone during Wednesday’s call.

“Our election, under my estimation, was free, fair, safe and secure,” Ford said.

Grant Woods, an advisory board member for the Voter Protection Program and former two-term Republican attorney general in Arizona, echoed Ford on the call, calling the Republicans’ lawsuits “shenanigans” and “frivolous.”

Woods, who served as chief of staff to the late Sen. John McCain and who switched to the Democratic party in 2018, said that while the lawsuits have been without merit, he does think they are having an effect on the public’s perception of American elections.

“The impact they have is that they’ve done what our enemies could never do. They’ve cause a substantial amount of Americans to lose faith in our election system,” Woods said.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.