The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled 5-2 that Nevada Green Party candidate Jill Stein will not appear on the state’s presidential ballot because their petition failed to meet the minor party’s access requirements.

The Nevada Democratic Party filed a lawsuit in June against the Nevada Green Party for alleged invalid signatures.

The Green Party submitted 29,500 petition signatures so its candidates could be included on the ballot, which was roughly three times as many as needed. Nevada Democratic Party then sued, claiming some were signed too far in the past or seem altered, making them invalid.

The district court in Carson City denied the lawsuit in August. The Democrats amended the original lawsuit because the language used the improper affidavit. The case was then taken to the Nevada Supreme Court.

The state Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s ruling to allow the Green Party to stay on the Nevada general election ballot. According to the court documents, the petition contained the “circulator affidavit for initiative and referendum petitions, instead of the circulator affidavit for minor party ballot access” which is what the Nevada Democratic Party amended their lawsuit to say.

The problem: The Green Party submitted the petition that does not swear that they believe each person signing the petition is a registered voter in the county of their residence. In order to be added to the ballot, all minor parties must include this verification. The Green Party did not, so the Nevada Democratic Party added this to their lawsuit and the Nevada Supreme Court ruled to not let them on the ballot for not meeting all requirements.

“The circulator affidavit used by the Nevada Green Party omitted a legally required element: the attestation that each signatory was a registered voter in the county of his or her residence,” the document said.

However, Justices Douglas Herndon and Justice Kristina Pickering voted against the ruling, saying they believed the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office made an “egregious error” when they accidentally sent the Green Party an affidavit with the incorrect requirements.

The secretary of state’s office originally sent the Nevada Green Party the wrong sample petition, which did not include the affidavit requiring voter registration verification, according to the documents. With the wrong affidavit, the Green Party’s petition would not meet the requirements of a minor political party to be on the ballot.

The party still managed to submit the petition with the right affidavit the first time, by not using the same form the secretary of state’s office provided them. However, this petition did not include a blank space for signers to put their petition district, so the office sent it back and notified the Nevada Green Party that they needed the petition district, and emailed the party new instructions.

The employee who provided the Green Party with further guidance told them they had an “older version,” according to the dissenting judges’ opinion. The employee asked the Green Party to use this “newer” form — with the wrong affidavit — to collect signatures.

The dissenting justices claim the Nevada Green Party was “affirmatively directed” by the secretary of state’s office to use this incorrect form because the employee told them to use the wrong form.

Still, the secretary of state’s online guide for minor political parties to apply to be on the ballot states the petition needs the verification that signatures are from people who are actual registered voters. So even without the proper affidavit, the state supreme court ruled that they should’ve done their research into what was required for them to be on the ballot.

The court acknowledged the miscommunication of improper materials on the behalf of the secretary of state’s office, but classified the situation as an unfortunate event that could’ve been remedied with a more in-depth review.

“There is no evidence that the email was anything but an unfortunate mistake or that the (s)ecretary intended to mislead the Green Party,” the documents said.

“If the Green Party had reviewed the petition before using it, it would have discovered the incorrect circulator affidavit …This is an unfortunate oversight on the part of both the secretary of state’s office and the Green Party.”

Herndon and Pickering said they believed the secretary of state’s office’s mistake would be the result of a “tremendous injustice.”

The secretary of state’s office told the RGJ in an email that they took “no position” on whether the Green Party’s petition was legal.

“We respect the decision of the Justices, and are working with the counties to ensure the decision is carried out,” Cecilia Heston, spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said.

“Providing accurate information to the public is a priority for our office, and we will continue to review and improve all guides and documentation.”

The last time Green Party had any candidates on the Nevada ballot was in the 2008 presidential election, when Cynthia McKinney received about 1,400 votes compared with Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s 532,000.

Co-chair of the Nevada Green Party Margery Hanson told the RGJ due to the court events today, she “would not be voting this cycle.”

The Nevada Democratic Party did not respond to the RGJ’s request for comment.

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (KOLO) – A Nevada man has been convicted of defrauding three banks of more than $11 million worth of COVID-19 pandemic relief funds.

30-year-old Meelad Dezfooli of Henderson was convicted of engaging in a scheme to submit fraudulent loan applications under the PPP.

The court found that Dezfooli submitted three fraudulent PPP loan applications to federally insured banks, supposedly to benefit companies he controlled. Evidence showed that Dezfooli falsely represented certain material information in those applications, including information about payroll, employees, and use of loan proceeds.

After obtaining the $11.2 million, Dezfooli then laundered and/or spent the money by doing things like buying around 25 residences and two luxury cars, funding a personal investment account, and gambling extensively. The DOJ says after being originally charged, Dezfooli continued to launder criminal proceeds by selling five of the twenty-five residences.

Dezfooli was convicted of three counts of bank fraud, three counts of money laundering, and four counts of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property.

He will be sentenced on Dec. 5 and faces a maximum of 30 years in prison on each of the bank fraud counts, 20 years for each of the money laundering counts, and 10 years for each of the counts of engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property.

Copyright 2024 KOLO. All rights reserved.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Nevada Supreme Court on Thursday ended a defamation lawsuit brought by casino mogul Steve Wynn against The Associated Press in 2018, rejecting his bid for a jury to hear his claim that he was defamed by an AP story about two women who alleged Wynn committed sexual misconduct.

The seven-member court upheld a February ruling by a three-judge panel that cited the state’s anti-SLAPP law, or “strategic lawsuits against public participation, that blocks lawsuits filed to intimidate or silence critics.

That ruling said anti-SLAPP statutes “were designed to limit precisely the type of claim at issue here, which involves a news organization publishing an article in a good faith effort to inform their readers regarding an issue of clear public interest.”

In what the unanimous full court said was an effort to clarify the law, Justice Ron Parraguirre wrote that Wynn, as a public figure, needed to show “clear and convincing evidence to reasonably infer that the publication was made with actual malice.”

“The public had an interest in understanding the history of misconduct alleged to have been committed by one of the most recognized figures in Nevada,” the opinion said, “and the article directly relates to that interest.”

Attorneys who represent Wynn personally and those who handled the case did not respond to email and telephone messages seeking comment.

“The Associated Press is very pleased with the Nevada Supreme Court’s decision,” Lauren Easton, AP vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement.

The AP plans to seek reimbursement for legal costs through a lower court.

Dominic Gentile, a veteran Nevada lawyer well-known for his work in First Amendment law, said the ruling “will make it even more difficult for a public figure to bring an action over expressive conduct.”

“In most cases, the standard is ‘a preponderance of evidence’ that a lawsuit is being brought to stifle speech,” he said. “This case has taken that and raised the bar for someone who is a public figure to not get thrown out of court.”

Gentile has been an attorney in the state since 1979 and has taught at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd School of Law. Malice, he said, means “you know it’s false or you didn’t do enough to determine that it was.”

Wynn, now 82 and living in Florida, is the billionaire developer of a luxury casino empire in the U.S. and the Chinese gambling enclave of Macao. He has consistently denied sexual misconduct allegations, which were first reported in January 2018 by the Wall Street Journal.

He resigned as CEO of Wynn Resorts Ltd. after the reports became public, divested company shares and quit the corporate board. Last year, he cut ties to the industry he helped shape in Las Vegas, agreeing with Nevada gambling regulators to pay a $10 million fine, with no admission of wrongdoing.

In a flurry of settlements in 2019, the Nevada Gaming Commission fined Wynn’s former company a record $20 million for failing to investigate claims of sexual misconduct made against him before he resigned. Massachusetts gambling regulators fined the company and a top executive $35.5 million for failing to disclose while applying for a license for a Boston-area resort that there had been sexual misconduct allegations against Wynn.

Wynn Resorts agreed in November 2019 to accept $20 million in damages from Wynn and $21 million more from insurance carriers on behalf of current and former employees of Wynn Resorts to settle shareholder lawsuits accusing company directors of failing to disclose misconduct allegations.

Those agreements also included no admission of wrongdoing.

Wynn filed his defamation lawsuit in April 2018 against AP, one of its reporters and one of the women, Halina Kuta. Kuta filed claims to police that Wynn raped her in the 1970s in Chicago and that she gave birth to their daughter in a gas station restroom.

Neither accuser was identified in the AP report. Their names and other identifying information were blacked out in documents obtained by AP under a public records request. Las Vegas police refused to provide additional details and said too much time had elapsed since Kuta said the events occurred in 1973 or 1974. No charges were ever filed against Wynn.

The AP typically does not publish names of people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Kuta agreed to be named in later news reports.

Wynn attorneys argued that the article, which cited police documents, failed to fully describe elements of Kuta’s account that would have cast doubt on her allegation.

A trial court judge later ruled that Kuta defamed Wynn with her claims, which the judge termed “totally fanciful,” and awarded Wynn a nominal $1 in damages.

Copyright 2024 Associated Press. All rights reserved.