American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada v. County of Nye

Summary

The Nevada Supreme Court granted in part an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus challenging Nye County's planned voting procedures for the November 2022 election. The court barred livestreaming a hand-count read-aloud process before the polls closed, required safeguards against observers prematurely learning or releasing vote-count information, and required the county to make all three statutory methods of proving voter identity available when signature verification failed. The court denied relief concerning the ADA touchscreen because the county represented that any voter requesting its use would be permitted to do so.

Holdings

1. The court exercised its discretion to consider the petition because the election issues were urgent, implicated significant public interests, and lacked an adequate alternative remedy.
2. The County could not livestream the hand-count read-aloud process before the polls closed because doing so would violate statutory prohibitions against releasing or disseminating election results before voting concluded.
3. Respondents were required to ensure that public observers did not prematurely learn election results and to require observers to certify that they would not prematurely release information regarding the vote count.
4. Writ relief was not warranted on the touchscreen issue because the County Clerk clarified that any voter who wanted to use the ADA-compliant touchscreen would be allowed to do so without further inquiry.
5. When signature verification fails, the County must make available all three statutory methods for proving voter identity and may not limit voters to confirming an address or providing an identification card.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the Nevada Supreme Court should exercise its discretion to consider an emergency original petition for a writ of mandamus concerning election procedures.
2. Whether livestreaming a pre-election hand-count process in which ballot selections would be read aloud would violate statutory prohibitions on the premature release or dissemination of election results.
3. Whether limiting an ADA-compliant touchscreen voting machine to voters with special needs would violate federal and Nevada protections requiring equal and nondiscriminatory access to voting systems.
4. Whether requiring identification when signature or address verification failed would unlawfully restrict voters to fewer than the three statutory methods for proving identity.

Disposition

writ_granted