Barbara Cegavske

Nevada Secretary of State Finds No Evidence Election Fraud Took Place in State’s Election

Although former President Donald Trump has regularly and insistently claimed that the 2020 general election was rife with fraud and abuse, not a single state has been able to turn up evidence of widespread fraud that could have contributed to his electoral losses.

Trump’s narrative was dealt a further blow after Barbara Cegavske, Nevada’s Secretary of State, announced that an investigation had found no “evidentiary support” for the Republican Party’s allegations of election fraud.

“And while the NVGOP raises policy concerns about the integrity of mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, and same-day voter registration, these concerns do not amount to evidentiary support for the contention that the 2020 general election was plagued by widespread voter fraud,” Cegavske said in a letter addressed to the Nevada Republican Party.

The investigation noted that “the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as U.S. Courts of Appeal in the Ninth Circuit and elsewhere, have ruled that election officials cannot lawfully require documentary proof of citizenship as a condition of voter registration. Nevada law is consistent with federal law in this regard.”

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Cegavske, the only Republican officeholder in the state of Nevada, was censured by her own party after she refused to investigate allegations of fraud she said were unfounded.

“My job is to carry out the duties of my office as enacted by the Nevada Legislature, not carry water for the state GOP or put my thumb on the scale of democracy,” Cegavske said in a statement last week. “Unfortunately, members of my own party continue to believe the 2020 general election was wrought with fraud — and that somehow I had a part in it — despite a complete lack of evidence to support that belief. Regardless of the censure vote by the Nevada Republican Party Central Committee, I will continue in my efforts to oversee secure elections in Nevada and to restore confidence in our elections, confidence which has been destroyed by those falsely claiming the 2020 general election produced widespread fraud.”

Trump’s campaign filed a federal lawsuit in Nevada in November to block what they claimed were “illegal votes” by thousands of people; these allegations were shown to baseless and the lawsuit was ultimately thrown out. Trump’s later attempt to contest the general election results in the Supreme Court was also rebuffed.