Biden’s lead increases over Trump in Nevada

Former Vice President Joe Biden has increased his lead over President Donald Trump in Nevada with more than 120,000 ballots still to be counted or verified in populous Clark County.

In the results released Friday afternoon by the Nevada Secretary of State’s office, Biden now leads by 22,657 votes, a margin of 632,558 votes to Trump’s 609,901 votes — 49.83 percent to 48.04 percent.

Nevada has become a pivotal swing state, with six electoral votes.

Joe Gloria, the Clark County registrar of voters, held a news conference Friday to update the public on outstanding ballots and his employees’ progress.

He first clarified an erroneous number reported Thursday. Gloria previously stated that 51,000 votes would be included in Friday morning’s update, but that number was actually closer to 30,000. One of his staff members accidentally counted pages and not ballots. For the first time ever, the county’s absentee ballots featured two pages’ worth of races up for election.

Some 63,000 mail ballots are still being counted, Gloria said. The county should have them all counted by Sunday, he added.

The county will now release updated vote tallies twice per day: once in the morning, and once in the late afternoon.

There are also some 60,000 provisional ballots. The county has begun working with the Secretary of State’s office to validate these ballots before counting them. Among the checks required on provisional ballots is making sure the voter did not also vote in another of Nevada’s counties.

In addition to both of those categories, there are some ballots that required a voter to show identification in order for them to be counted. Often these are same-day registrants or voters whose address the county could not confirm through usual means.

Gloria did not know how many of these ID-required ballots were left, but the number was some 44,000 as of Thursday. These voters have until 5 p.m. Friday to show identification.

There are also some 2,100 mail ballots currently in the cure process, meaning they were unsigned or their signatures did not match county records.

There was an increased police presence at the county elections office Friday, which Gloria explained.

“I feel the response has been excellent from the community (and) from the (county) commissioners who called to make sure that we have that support,” Gloria said.

“But it’s troubling for my employees,” he continued. “I have employees who are nervous leaving the building, and rightfully so. They work late into the night, so we encourage all of them to not leave by themselves. They can also request an escort from our security or law enforcement. We’re doing everything we can to protect our employees.”

Gloria said he could not discuss whether any threats have been made to him, his staff or the office, but he noted police are monitoring social media for any of those type of messages.

Contact Rory Appleton at rappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.