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Nevada election officials say viral video claiming voter fraud doesn't pass muster

Nevada election officials say viral video claiming voter fraud doesn't pass muster
Posted at 3:47 PM, Aug 23, 2016
and last updated 2016-08-23 18:56:38-04

Nevada election officials don't plan to take any action over a recent viral video purporting to show election fraud in Las Vegas.

The Nevada Secretary of State's office and Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria said Tuesday that they have no plans to pursue allegations of registration fraud stemming from a viral YouTube video posted over the weekend that has been viewed more than 110,00 times.

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske's office said the video, which alleges that the act of registering voters must be done in a nonpartisan fashion, doesn't violate Nevada law.

"Based on the video and the relevant statutes, there is not sufficient evidence of a violation of Nevada election law to warrant further investigation by this office," the office said in a statement.

The video itself shows an encounter between a woman registering people to vote in a parking lot while using a clipboard adorned with an anti-Donald Trump image and holding pro-Hillary Clinton campaign literature. 

Nevada law regarding voter registration mostly deals with the actions of people employed by "voter registration agencies," such as the Department of Motor Vehicles and local election officials. The Secretary of State's office said the video didn't show any violation of Nevada law, and that the First Amendment offers broad political speech protections for voter registration drives.

"Federal courts have ruled numerous times that voter registration activity is core political speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and that those conducting voter registration drives have the right to select what they believe to be the most effective means of conducting the drives," they said in a statement.

Gloria compared the woman's actions in the video as similar to jaywalking, saying his office was more concerned with more blatant examples of voter registration fraud and that his office had no plans to investigate the incident.

"This is not an incident we feel is worthy of pursuing," he said. "It would be impossible for me to police these people because there are so many of them."

Gloria also said that his office has received several emails and phone calls over the video, but no formal complaint has been filed over the video. He added that his office has safeguards in place to double-check the authenticity of voter registration information from partisan-linked groups to guard against the potential of fraud.