Residents in Nevada and the Rest of the Country Wait for our Results
Ariel Smith reports on students among the many voters and residents impatient to know when important Silver State races will have definitive winners.
Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day in Nevada and received through Saturday can still be counted, which means final, definitive results for close races in Nevada, including for the House, Senate and governor might have to wait until early next week.
Some students said they were barely able to vote but hoped they could make a difference by doing so.
Nevada’s voting could determine the balance of power in the US Senate, with the race between incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt extremely close.
Natalia Facio, 20, a student at UNR, voted by mail this past weekend.
“Voting was made unnecessarily difficult for college students,” she said, due to difficulties she alleged in updating voter registration information for students with addresses outside of Reno.
As far as concerns over long wait times to count ballots, Facio said it provides an opportunity for claims of voter fraud. She called those complaints “disingenuous” and an attempt to reduce the chances of Democratic Party candidates, like incumbent Senator Cortez Masto, who is counting on votes from urban areas and mail in ballots.
If Cortez Masto catches up in late vote counting, that could mean Democrats retain control of the US Senate. While the House will probably go to a slim Republican majority, several Nevada races for the lower house have yet to be called.
Landon Murray, 21, who voted in person on Election Day at the Joe Crowley Student Union, was hesitant to make any final predictions. He felt that the midterms were very close. He says he voted down the ballot for Republican candidates and no on ballot measures one, two, and three. Murray said he was “not at all worried” about voter fraud or tampered ballots.
Sami Lampe, 24, (above), a journalism major, said she had a hectic Election Day. She drove 45 minutes in a snowstorm to her polling location to drop off her ballot. Lampe was happy with voter turnout and voted Democratic down the ballot. She said she is not nervous about the results because of the significant turnout and ballots yet to be counted.
“I just wish there was more information,” she said.
As of Wednesday midday, election results for Nevada’s races hadn’t budged from hours earlier, with thousands and thousands of ballots yet to be counted and no knowledge of how many exactly were being processed.
