Biden widens his lead over Trump in Nevada

President-elect Joe Biden continues to hold his lead over President Donald Trump in the presidential race in Nevada.

In numbers updated Wednesday morning by the Nevada secretary of state’s office, Biden has 671,887 votes to Trump’s 635,017 — 50.25 percent to 47.49 percent.

During a news conference Wednesday, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said that election officials were in the home stretch.

“We have no reason to believe that we won’t complete our count by (Thursday) evening at some point,” he said.

As many as 60,000 provisional ballots remain outstanding and Gloria said the county was making “very good progress” in determining which ones were eligible to count. He anticipated no issues rolling those into the system and officials will likely report those figures Friday morning but could do so as early as Thursday evening.

A far smaller number of ballots still require ID or curing, which is when the county contacts a voter whose mail ballot envelope contains a missing signature or an illegible one. The voter must confirm their identity before the ballot is counted, and the deadline to do so is 5 p.m. Thursday.

Related: How are Nevada ballots counted and verified?

In what has become a familiar refrain in this election, Gloria said that county election officials would continue to work with the secretary of state’s office to address any complaints of nefarious voter activity.

“There has not been an allegation that we weren’t able to in one way or another explain,” he said.

As the brief eight-minute news conference came to a close, there was a moment of levity: Gloria was asked what he planned to do once the election was officially over.

“I think sleep will be number one,” he said. “It has been a very stressful election and my staff has done a tremendous job of hanging on.”

Still, there remains two initiative petitions that the staff will need to address next week. And there also might be requests for recounts from campaigns following vote certification on Monday, which Gloria noted would set off a “mad dash” to get them done.

By law, the county would have five days to start a recount following a request, and then five days to finish. But Gloria said he was “absolutely” certain that his staff was capable of handling the work.

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.