The clerk wears many hats in Nye and does a largely thankless job, but for our purposes it's the traditionally nonpartisan office's role as caretaker of the county's elections that's our focus. Did I just mention it is a nonpartisan job?

Assemblywoman Tracy Brown-May (D-Las Vegas) presented the bill and said the measure was intended to "address the inadequacies in accessibility for people with disabilities to be able to cast their votes."

In the days after media outlets called the race for secretary of state in his favor, Democrat Cisco Aguilar has often attributed his win to a single issue: Small-"d" democracy was on the ballot. 

However, Cegavske's letter to Kampf, written by Deputy Secretary of State for Elections Mark Wlaschin, raised multiple concerns about the proposed process, primarily regarding the possibility of tampering by those counting votes.

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske told Nye County's top election administrator to cease hand counting ballots immediately on Thursday evening.

In an August 2021 email to an Elko County deputy district attorney, Steninger laid out the group's interest in having "the rural counties … announce plans to shift to paper ballots," which they believed would make the rest of the state "obliged to follow suit."

The ruling is a writ of mandamus — a court order compelling a party to take a certain action — and otherwise does not affect the county's overall plan to hand count ballots this election cycle.

In the race for Nevada secretary of state, former Republican assemblyman and one-time congressional candidate Jim Marchant has cut a national profile as a prominent denier of the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election and vocal critic of the state's election administration. 

Aguilar is running against Republican Jim Marchant, a former state assemblyman and congressional candidate in 2020 who is among the most prominent election-deniers in Nevada.

Mark Wlaschin, the deputy secretary of state for elections who oversaw the adoption of the regulation, said the amendment essentially establishes requirements only for officials planning to strictly hand count ballots.

During the meeting last week, Wlaschin said the average number of registered voters in jurisdictions across the country that solely hand count ballots is typically fewer than 800.

Marchant said his plan with Kampf involves using "paper ballots with anti-counterfeit measures," conducting voting and counting "on a precinct-level basis" and livestreaming — though he did not specify what would be streamed.