Judge appears exasperated with Trump lawyer, refuses order to preserve Nevada poll data
Donald Trump. JStone / Shutterstock.com.
A judge in Clark County, Nevada, on Tuesday ordered a lawyer for the Donald Trump campaign to sit down and denied his request for an order to preserve polling data at four polling places that stayed open late last Friday.
Judge Gloria Sturman said the Trump campaign had failed to exhaust administrative remedies before coming to court in a bid to preserve and sequester voting data for late-cast votes at the four locations in the Las Vegas area, according to tweets by National Law Journal reporter Zoe Tillman.
The campaign had also sought preservation of information on people working at the polls, according to Tillman, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Associated Press. The suit targets polling places with large minority populations, CNN reports.
According to the suit (PDF), the election law violations “were not random and neutral in their effect, but very much appear to have been intentionally coordinated with Democratic activists in order to skew the vote unlawfully in favor of Democratic candidates.”
Nevada law allows polling stations to remain open until everyone in line at closing time has a chance to vote, according to the suit. The Trump campaign says voters who showed up after the scheduled closing time at the four locations were allowed to vote, while voters at other sites who came late didn’t get to vote.
The lawsuit cites tweets about the late poll closings that encouraged people to go vote after the scheduled 8 p.m. closing time. The tweets came from “Twitter accounts supporting Democrats and the press,” according to the suit.
During the hearing on Tuesday, Sturman appeared “exasperated” as she “tore into Trump’s lawyers,” Vanity Fair reported.
Sturman said she didn’t know why a court order is needed when the county registrar is already required to preserve records. “Are [the votes] not to be counted?” she asked. “What are you saying? Why are we here? You want to preserve the poll data? That is offensive to me. Why don’t we wait to see if the secretary of state wants to do this?”
Sturman also said she was concerned about harassment of the poll workers. “I am not going to expose people doing their civic duty to help their fellow citizens vote … to public attention, ridicule and harassment,” she said.
Sturman then told Trump’s lawyer, “Thank you, sit down.”
