Nevada county's plan to hand-count ballots struck down

Jack Birle

October 30, 01:46 PM October 30, 01:46 PM

Officials in Nye County, Nevada, vowed to restructure their plan for hand-counting ballots after the state Supreme Court struck it down on Thursday.

The court ruled that the unprecedented plan to begin hand-counting all ballots violated the state's rules against counties disclosing election results early, saying the counting may resume once polls have closed on Election Day.

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In response to the court order, Nye County Clerk Mark Kampf said in a statement Friday that officials would continue with their hand count once they modify the plan to the court and the Arizona secretary of state's liking.

"Yesterday’s Supreme Court order requires us to make some changes to our hand count process. We will not conduct hand counting today, but will resume as soon as our plan is in compliance with the Court’s order and approved by the Secretary of State. There were no hand counts today, and none were planned over for the weekend prior to the decision from the court and SOS," Kampf said.

The county has not released further details into how officials plan to modify their hand recount for the midterm elections in just over a week.

The original plan would have separated the ballots to be counted in four to six different rooms to avoid anyone seeing the full results of the count, with the hand count running in conjunction with the traditional machine count of the ballots.

Nevada has two "toss-up" races, per RealClearPolitics, with the gubernatorial and Senate races expected to be some of the closest of this midterm cycle.