VICTOR JOECKS: How right-wing third parties doomed Sam Brown

Conservatives concerned that election fraud sunk Sam Brown’s Senate chances need to look at a more obvious culprit — right-leaning third parties.

Nevada has finally finished counting ballots. Republicans notched a huge win at the top of the ticket. President-elect Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris by 3.1 percentage points, around 46,000 votes. This was a bigger margin of victory than President Joe Biden enjoyed here in 2020, when he beat Trump by 2.4 percentage points.

Yet, down the ballot, there were only a few bright spots for Republicans. Their candidates lost all of the Southern Nevada congressional races and many close legislative races. Democratic gerrymandering was a major factor in many of those losses. In the Assembly, Republican candidates won around 100,000 more votes than Democratic candidates. Democrats, however, will have a 27-15 majority.

The race that has caused the most angst was Democrat Sen. Jacky Rosen besting Brown by more than 1.6 percentage points, about 24,000 votes.

In total, Brown received 74,000 fewer votes than Trump. Some Republicans have concluded the election was fraudulent, especially because Brown was ahead the day after the election.

Nevada’s election system does have major security problems. The most obvious is the combination of universal mail ballots and inaccurate voter rolls. As even Democrat Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar inadvertently admitted, signature verification isn’t an adequate security measure. But determining if any ballots were fraudulently submitted is virtually impossible.

In contrast, it’s easy to see how many votes Brown probably lost to right-leaning candidates in his race. Janine Hansen from the conservative Independent American Party received around 21,300 votes. Libertarian Chris Cunningham received around 20,900 votes.

So Brown lost by 24,000 votes, and those two candidates received more than 42,000 votes. In the presidential race, candidates with those two parties received fewer than 9,000 votes.

If the IAP and Libertarian Party didn’t run candidates in the Senate race, Brown may well have won.

This is no conspiracy theory. In Wisconsin, Democrat donors bankrolled efforts to help right-leaning candidates run for U.S. Senate. Democrat incumbent Tammy Baldwin won with 49.4 percent of the vote.

“If not for Democratic operatives placing a phony America First candidate on the ballot to deceive voters and siphon off over 28,000 votes, I would have won,” Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Eric Hovde said.

Here’s how the scheme works. Liberal groups target Republican households with mailers and other ads. They claim the Republican candidate isn’t conservative enough, so Republicans should vote for the “true” conservative third-party candidate. If even 5 percent of Republicans do so, it can swing a U.S. Senate seat.

Is this underhanded? Sure. Is it effective? Absolutely. Instead of complaining about it, Republican donors should copy it. This is the very reason I wrote six years ago that Nevada conservatives should fund the Green Party. If someone had taken that advice, Nevada might have two Republican senators right now.

The problem with obsessing over fraud is that it doesn’t change anything. Helping the Green Party get started in Nevada would.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on X.