Rural county's hand count of ballots, a result of conspiracy theories and complaints, is going slowly and has problems

UPDATE, Oct. 29: "Nevada’s secretary of state told a rural county late Thursday it must halt a first-of-its-kind hand count of mail-in votes after the state Supreme Court warned the current process violates Nevada election law," AP reports. The official said the count can resume after polls close.

Nye County (Wikipedia)

A rural Nevada County is hand-counting all its ballots because local officials were "bombarded with complaints by residents after nearly two years of conspiracy theories related to voting machines and false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump," Gabe Stern of Report for America reports for The Associated Press. "Trump won 69 percent of the vote in Nye County even as President Joe Biden won Nevada by about 33,500 votes." The county has about 50,000 people.

Stern writes, "Nevada is home to one of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races in the country, as well as high-stakes contests for governor and the office that oversees elections. . . . Nye is the most prominent county in the U.S. to change its vote-counting process in reaction to the conspiracy theories — even though there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of machines in the 2020 election, including in Nevada. The decision earlier this year prompted the longtime county clerk to resign."

The problematic nature of hand counting ballots became evident quickly, Stern reports: "The group observed by AP found during its first 30 minutes that it had mismatched numbers for eight candidates. A recount took nearly 40 minutes, and two of the recounts still had different outcomes."