Full election results from the state of Nevada won’t be available until November 12, according to Joe Gloria, an official from the state’s most populous county.
Nevada has six electoral votes to offer, and while the state appeared to be leaning toward Joe Biden on Thursday, the race is too close to call.
Gloria said 51,000 ballots will be reported on Friday, with more than 60,000 provisional ballots cast during early voting and on Election Day still outstanding.
“We are anticipating to have the bulk of our mail ballots that have been received into the system by Saturday or Sunday,” Gloria said in a press briefing on Thursday.
He emphasised that the process was running slow because of the sheer number of mail-in ballots, not because of “any improper ballots that are being processed”.
He said “a small number” of ballots are pending – including those that are delayed in the mail- and likely won’t be finalised until 12 November, in accordance with state rules.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s campaign said it would file a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Nevada, as part of efforts to challenge vote counts in closely-contested states in the election.
In Las Vegas, Trump’s allies alleged, without evidence, that there had been voting irregularities in populous Clark County.
“We believe that there are dead voters that have been counted. We are also confident that there are thousands of people whose votes have been counted that have moved out of Clark County during the pandemic,” former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican, told reporters.
Nevada is one of a handful of battleground states that could decide the presidency.
In response, Joe Biden’s campaign spokesman Jen O’Malley Dillon accused the Trump team of “continuing to push a failing strategy” of lawsuits.
She called the legal challenges “nothing more than an attempt to distract and delay what is now inevitable – Joseph Biden is going to be the next president of the United States”.
“At the end of today, and hopefully it is the end of today, we will win by a sizeable number in Pennsylvania,” she said.
Bob Bauer, who is directing Biden’s legal team, said the Republican claims are “part of a broader misinformation campaign,” and accused Trump supporters of trying to sabotage confidence in the electoral system.