Across the country, various irregularities and delays in election results are creating serious concerns.
Americans want to know that all legal votes are being counted and processed in a timely manner. Though in some communities, such as Maricopa County, Arizona, entire days are passing by with no clear knowledge of the winners and losers of key elections.
Maricopa County is not an outlier in this regard, either. In Washoe County, Nevada, there are once again issues with the management of ballots. In the case of Washoe, however, these issues entail the live counting of ballots suddenly stopping.
What’s Going on Here?
In the Nevada Senate race, live ballot counts showed Republican Adam Laxalt with a fair lead over his left-wing opponent. Around this same time period, Washoe County’s live-streaming of ballot counts abruptly ended late Thursday night and into Friday morning. Nevada residents who were watching these live streams were met with black screens for hours.
Looks like Washoe County's live stream, which has been showing 4 angles of the ballot counting rooms, did go dark last night at 11:24p and stayed dark until just before 8a this morning.
We've reached out to Washoe County to ask what happened. https://t.co/MsWJi7lKzE pic.twitter.com/i9fdMAnTyZ
— Ben Margiott (@BenMargiott) November 10, 2022
Understandably, people are now questioning what happened and whether or not the cut-off of live ballot counting was intentional. To this day, there are also many concerns about what transpired after the cameras shut off.
The transparency that Washoe County was trying to provide with live-streaming ballot counts was undermined the moment the cameras shut off. If the live footage had been restored within a few minutes, there would be less cause for concern.
A Loose Explanation From Washoe County
According to Washoe County, election workers left the premises where ballots were being counted about an hour before the live footage went dark.
We know that our election livestream cameras went dark overnight. We investigated what happened and how to prevent it happening again. Learn more here: https://t.co/LT8OJkxX3L
— Washoe County (@washoecounty) November 10, 2022
Although the live stream was restored on Friday morning, Washoe County indicated that future solutions to prevent blackouts like this may involve not live-streaming ballot counts at all. This may solve a problem, but it’s not the one most Americans want solved when they demand more transparency in their elections.
