Nevada
‘Administrative errors and confusion’: Governor calls on lawmakers to speed up election certification process
LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Election reform is on the table as Nevada finally certified the 2024 election results Tuesday. Certifying the election is part of a long process that leads to the electoral college confirming the results next month. But changes could be coming to the way the state counts its votes in future elections.
No more waiting on Nevada.
That seems to be Governor Joe Lombardo’s goal after the Silver State took its time counting those votes.
Now we know why, according to Secretary of State, Cisco Aguilar.
“First, let me start by addressing the obvious. It has been a challenging election cycle,” Secretary Aguilar said.
Those challenges played out on a national stage, as Nevada was one of the last states to be called. Now the governor is calling for change after the Nevada Supreme Court certified the general election saying in a statement, “The time it takes to count ballots and finalize our elections in Nevada is simply unacceptable. Nevadans deserve timely election results, and all ballots should be received by election day.”
That’s what the governor wants in the future. That’s not what’s happening now.
Especially since mail-in voting proved to be the most popular way to cast a ballot this year as 45% of Nevadans mailed it in, 37% voted early, and 18% voted on election day.
Mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before the day of the election and received by the fourth day after election day are accepted and processed.
That led to a backlog of votes to count.
Secretary of State, Cisco Aguilar seems open to changing things up for next time. “We have a responsibility to start to build that capacity to ensure we are processing mail ballots in a way that gives us the opportunity to provide the results as close to election night as possible,” Aguilar said.
Since Secretary Aguilar doesn’t want states waiting on Nevada anymore, he suggested a few changes.
“We are all determined to make improvements and suggest legislative steps to ensure our elections remain free and fair, with a focus on continuously improving the voter experience,” Secretary Aguilar said.
But Aguilar admits there were some snafus that led to delayed results among a lot of first-time election officials.
“They continue to deal with the rapid turnover of staff, in an increasingly complex requirement. Those requirements and turnover led to administrative errors and confusion,” Secretary Aguilar said.
Governor Lombardo says ballot issues should be immediately addressed in the next legislative session. That begins in February 2025.
Copyright 2024 KVVU. All rights reserved.
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — A deadly crash has closed all lanes at I-15 and Charleston Boulevard, police say.
Nevada State Police posted on social media after 7 p.m. about the crash. Police say drivers in the area should use other routes.
Police have not immediately shared details about the victim or if other people are involved. It’s not yet confirmed if impairment is suspected.
This is a developing story. Check back later for details.
Copyright 2025 KVVU. All rights reserved.
This story was co-published with Public Domain.
Karen Budd-Falen, a top official at the Department of Interior, has financial ties to the controversial Thacker Pass lithium mine in northern Nevada — a project that the Trump administration worked to fast-track during its first term. In recent months, the administration took an equity stake in the mine and the mine’s parent company.
After an unexplained delay, Public Domain and High Country News obtained Budd-Falen’s financial disclosure earlier this month, which details her family’s extensive land holdings. Among them is Home Ranch LLC, a Nevada ranching operation valued at over $1 million. Nevada’s business search database shows a Home Ranch LLC that listed Frank Falen as the manager in February 2022. Frank Falen is also the name of Karen Budd Falen’s husband.
In November 2018, not long after Karen Budd-Falen joined the first Trump administration as a top legal official at the Interior Department, Home Ranch LLC agreed to sell water rights to Lithium Nevada Corporation, the company developing the Thacker Pass mine, for an undisclosed amount of money, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Frank Falen is listed on the document.
A Home Ranch also appears in planning documents that Lithium Nevada submitted to federal regulators during Trump’s first term. A monitoring plan for Thacker Pass, dated July 2021, notes that the company intended to use existing stock water wells owned by Home Ranch LLC to “monitor potential drawdown impacts” from its mining operations.
The water purchase agreement and other records raise questions about potential conflicts of interest. Budd-Falen was appointed in March as associate deputy secretary to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — a position that does not require Senate confirmation. She also served as a high-ranking legal official at the Interior Department during President Trump’s first term.
It was during that earlier government stint that her official calendar lists a November 6, 2019 meeting in which Budd-Falen was scheduled to have “lunch with Lithium Nevada.”
In 2019, Lithium Nevada, a subsidiary of the Canadian mining firm Lithium Americas, was seeking speedy approval for its Thacker Pass mine in northern Nevada. In the waning days of the first Trump administration it received just that. In January 2021, the Bureau of Land Management approved the mine project, which includes some 5,700 acres of public land.
The $2.2 billion, open-pit mine project has drawn fierce opposition from area tribes and environmentalists, who argue it threatens water resources, endangered species and sacred cultural sites. Thacker Pass, known as Peehee Mu’huh to the Paiute Shoshone people, was the site of an 1865 massacre of at least 31 Paiute people.
Budd-Falen was being considered to lead the BLM during Trump’s first term, but turned down the director job when she learned that she and her husband would have to sell their interests in their family ranches to avoid conflicts of interest, she told The Fence Post in 2018.
Since returning to power, Trump and his team have again worked to move the project forward, as part of a broader push to boost critical mineral mining in the U.S. In September, the Trump administration struck a deal with Lithium Americas to take a 5% equity stake in both the Thacker Pass mine and the company, in exchange for the release of loan money from the Department of Energy.
Budd-Falen has largely worked behind the scenes at the Interior Department. Little is known about what issues she has focused on since returning to the sprawling agency. Notably, Interior officials have yet to release her ethics agreement, which would detail any companies or projects that are off limits.
“Did she have any oversight of the environmental review process regarding Thacker Pass? It is a big question,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a water conservation group in Nevada. “If she didn’t recuse herself, it would fly in the face of the impartial decisionmaking that Americans expect from government officials.”
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SPARKS, Nev. (BRAIN) — Bicycle Technologies International relocated its warehouse and service operations to a new distribution center with a footprint 50% larger than its previous location about a half mile away.
The facility increases BTI’s inventory capacity, and accelerates order fulfillment for its dealer network. It also expands BTI’s suspension service workspace. All the daily cutoff times will remain unchanged for shops, and the facility is fully operational and shipping packages.
“Our new Sparks distribution center represents a major investment in the future of our company and in the success of our retailer partners,” said Preston Martin, BTI co-founder. “The expanded footprint is timely given that BTI will be introducing more top brands in 2026.”
The company is headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and continues to ship from there as well.
BTI said more stock at the new facility means fewer split shipments from multiple locations, reducing the average carbon footprint per order.
Supplementing the building’s skylights and office windows, BTI upgraded all lighting to LEDs with occupancy sensors that save energy by turning off lights in vacant areas. The Sparks’ staff can utilize BTI’s Green Machine benefit that pays employees cash to ride, walk, or take public transit to work.
BTI’s new address is 740 E Glendale Ave., Sparks, Nevada, 89431.
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