Caucus Chaos Continues: Clark County GOP has more ballots than voters

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) - Clark County has more GOP ballots than voters, throwing the caucus process into disarray.

Mitt Romney was the clear winner in the Nevada caucus, but the number two spot is still up in the air, as are the final total as votes in Clark County which are still being counted more than 30 hours after the caucus ended.

When they resumed counting at 9 a.m. Saturday, Republican volunteers were being observed by state GOP officials and representatives from each campaign, many of whom were concerned about the delay in tabulating the results.

But, the Clark County Republicans have made it very clear, they're not going to be rushing, they're doing things on their own schedule.

“Frankly, I think that it’s very complex to begin with,” said Bobbie Haseley with the Clark County GOP. “You're talking about 38 site locations, thousands and thousands of people, hand ballots, and I can tell you that on the most part, everything went beautifully.”

While every other county had their election results posted last night, Clark County was still counting ballots Sunday morning. Haseley said volunteers were counting ballots until 4:30 in the morning when they decided to call it a night.

“It's a long process, we're 70 percent of the state, so you can imagine the number of people that have voted out there so it's going to take a while,” said Haseley.

The local office claims they were taking their time, because they didn't want a repeat of the botched Iowa caucus, where Mitt Romney was mistakenly declared the winner. But, after all the votes were counted, Rick Santorum ended up winning the state by 34 votes.

“We don't want to rush it, we don't want to be another Iowa,” Haseley said. “We want to make sure everything is going correct and I think we're going to take whatever time we need to do that.”
In a statement, Michael Chamberlain, the communication director for the Clark County GOP addressed the concerns that there were more ballots than voters.
“I don't know how that could've happened and I am not going to speculate on why that might be. They (the Clark County GOP) will do their best and coordinate with all the campaigns to make sure everyone agrees on the count at each individual precinct. I really don't know how that could've happened and I don't want to throw out answers now and find out later and be incorrect.”