As of early Friday afternoon, the Nevada Republican Adam Laxalt’s advantage over Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has unexpectedly dropped to less than 9,000 votes as authorities continue to tally mail-in ballots in the state’s major counties.

The most recent results from Clark and Washoe counties had Laxalt behind Cortez Masto by only 8,988 votes, or less than 1% of the overall vote. Election officials said Wednesday that ballot counting will continue through next week, but the majority of the ballots could be counted by today, according to Fox News, who also reported:

“Officials explained that mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Election Day but can arrive as late as Saturday to be counted. Election officials have been flooded with thousands of them since Tuesday as the margins between Cortez Masto and Laxalt remain tight.

More than 12,000 ballots from Clark County were counted Thursday night, helping Cortez Masto gain 3,285 votes on Laxalt. The city of Las Vegas resides within the county, and Democrats have a nearly 10-point advantage over Republicans in voter registration there. The Republican challenger’s lead grew by about 1,000 votes as ballots were counted from surrounding rural counties, but the gain was not enough to offset the mail-in votes for the Democratic senator.

Ballots are processed by bipartisan election workers at the Clark County Election Department during the ongoing election process on Nov. 10, 2022, in North Las Vegas, Nevada.

Washoe County, the second-most populated county in the state, tallied more than 18,000 ballots overnight on Thursday, giving Cortez Masto a net gain of 4,817 votes against Laxalt. Reno and Sparks are strongholds for Democrats, but the remainder of the county leans Republican, making the race close.

Clark County, the most populous county in Nevada, has set November 15 as the deadline for verifying mail-in votes, and November 17 as the latest date for releasing the final results.

Laxalt has 450,534 votes (48.97%) to become the next Nevada senator, while Cortez Masto has 441,546 votes (48%) for re-election, with 90.2% of the vote recorded.

And here is where, according to the Epoch Times, something quite fascinating occurred:

Cameras at the vote counting facility in a Nevada county still counting midterm election votes stopped broadcasting overnight, officials said on Nov. 10.

Wednesday around 11:24 p.m., the computer application that delivers the livestream feeds “lost connection with” the cameras, according to Bethany Drysdale, a spokesman for Washoe County.

According to county officials, all employees left for the night around an hour before the incident and none returned until 7 a.m. on Thursday.

On November 10, the link was restored just before 8 a.m.

The Washoe County security administrator reportedly checked the building’s security cameras, which operate on a separate system. The cameras revealed that no one entered the ballot room or Registrar’s Office during the outage of live feeds.

More on this story via The Republic Brief:

Security personnel are working to make that footage public.

A review of staff badges also indicated that no one entered the ballot room or office.

“In the future we will look for a solution that would prevent software disruptions or simply not offer a courtesy livestream feed,” Drysdale said in a statement. “Washoe County has been at the forefront of trying to innovate election transparency, but we have moved from an election night to a much longer election timeframe. The technology we are using to provide this livestream cannot keep up with these demands. We suggest enhancing transparency with security cameras rather than courtesy livestream cameras in future elections.” CONTINUE READING…