Outgoing elections head in key Nevada county details threats
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Heading into this year’s midterms, the elections director in the largest county in one of the nation’s most important battleground states had a lot on his mind.
A new Nevada law required every voter to get a mailed ballot, new processes were in effect for counting all those ballots days after Election Day and the public needed to be assured the count would be accurate.
And there was this: breakfast and lunch.
Joe Gloria, the registrar of voters in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, knew he had to figure out how to feed his staff so they wouldn’t have to leave the office as votes were being counted. It was another fallout of the lies surrounding the 2020 presidential election, when former President Donald Trump and his allies made false claims of widespread fraud in Nevada and five other battleground states he lost.
Gloria and his workers were targeted by threats as Nevada, and Clark County in particular, became a hotbed for conspiracy theories stemming from the false claims.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Monday, a month before he is scheduled to step down as Clark County Registrar of Voters, Gloria spoke about the high turnover rates of Nevada election officials, the need for more elections training throughout the state and detailed the threats and harassment he had largely kept quiet about while on the job.
“Over the course of years, I’ve developed, I guess, something of a shell,” he said over Zoom.
Gloria said protesters stood 100 feet (about 30 meters) from his office door, some carrying weapons, as he and his staff were counting the 2020 ballots. He received ominous emails and messages: “We know where you live” and “We know where your family sleeps,” read some of them.
Much of the harassment his staff received depended on how...