Washoe County, the second-most populous county in Nevada, said it still has 22,000 ballots left to count and hopes to get through most of them on Friday.
“I think we should be able to get the vast majority of them done. There might be a small amount that will trickle into Saturday,” Jamie Rodriguez, interim registrar of voters for Washoe County, told CNN.
The county includes the city of Reno.
Rodriguez said of the 22,000 remaining votes, about 20,000 are mail-in ballots. Another 1,914 are provisional ballots.
Rodriguez said the county disqualified 400 mail-in ballots on Thursday — about two-thirds of the mail-in ballots the county received Thursday — because they were postmarked after Election Day. “The bulk of the mail we received (Thursday) was postmarked on the 9th,” Rodriguez said, referring to the day after Election Day.
Rodriguez said that in the past, some voters have mailed their ballots on Election Day — but after the last mail pickup of the day, causing the ballots to be postmarked for the next day, which disqualifies them from being counted.
The 22,000 ballots that remain to be counted have already had the postmark verified, she said.
On Friday and Saturday, it is still possible the county, like all counties in Nevada, could receive more ballots that were postmarked on Election Day. Saturday is the last day ballots are allowed to arrive.
Washoe expects to update its vote totals at 11 p.m. ET Friday night.
What’s at stake in Nevada: A crucial Senate race between Republican nominee Adam Laxalt and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has not been called. The contest could help determine which party controls the Senate.
.jpg)
