'Any GOP leaders want to denounce this?' Backlash as 'garbage' conspiracy walked back
The Republican Party of Washoe County, Nevada, are walking back a conspiracy theory they promoted earlier this week about voting machines flipping ballots from former President Donald Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Washoe County, home to the city of Reno, is one of Nevada's only significant population centers outside of Clark County, home to Las Vegas and 75 percent of the state's population. It has emerged as a perennial battleground, with Democrats usually winning the county by a few points.
" has now deleted its posts claiming, without evidence, that voting machines were switching people's votes from Trump to Harris," reported KRNV's Ben Margiott. "Washoe County election officials told this: 'There have been no irregularities with voting machines.'"
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None of this satisfied Nevada Independent chief and foremost Nevada elections analyst Jon Ralston, who tore into the Washoe GOP on X for promulgating this rumor.
"So they are backing off from yesterday: 'We have received a report that twice, persons voting on a machine had the machine alter their vote from Trump to Harris,'" wrote Ralston, quoting their now-deleted posts. "They didn't just post this garbage; they blast-emailed it to their list. Any GOP leaders want to denounce this?"
Nevada, the least populous of the major battleground states, has overseen a dramatic expansion of mail-in voting in recent years, effectively giving it as a default option and registering new voters automatically at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Rumors about voting machines flipping people's votes tend to flare up every election cycle. These incidents virtually never indicate anything nefarious and are sometimes attributable to technical glitches, or, as in the case of a recent claim promoted by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) that a voter's printed ballot was flipped from Trump to Harris, mistakes made by the voter.