Party vice chair wins race in rural county
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A Nevada Republican Party leader, who signed illegitimate electoral certificates in an attempt to certify the state’s six electoral votes for former President Donald Trump, has won his race to become his county’s top elections official.
Jim Hindle, vice chair of the Nevada GOP, won the race last week, becoming the clerk and treasurer in Storey County.
Hindle’s campaign website indicates his fight for “election integrity.” Nevada’s Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, has repeatedly said there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
“I have served as chair of the Storey County Republicans, vice chair of the Nevada Republican Rural Caucus, finance chair and am currently the vice chair of the Nevada Republican Party,” a message on Hindle’s website said. “In 2020, I was elected by Nevada Republicans to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention as well as one of Nevada’s six Republican presidential electors.”
Hindle won last week’s race with 54% of the vote. He received 605 votes to Republican challenger Doreayne “Dore” Nevin’s 515 votes. No Democrat ran in the race.
Hindle was one of the Nevada Republican Party’s six electors who signed paperwork in December 2020 signaling their support for Trump in a symbolic ceremony devoid of any legal merit. The party then sent the paperwork to Washington.
The signing was held in Carson City and coincided with the official state-sanctioned tally on Dec. 14, 2020. President Joe Biden won the presidential race in Nevada by more than 2%. He received the state’s six electoral votes in the official state ceremony, which Cegavske oversaw.
A video of the GOP event has since been deleted. In January, the I-Team received a copy of the fake certificates, which attempted to certify the state’s electoral votes to Trump.
The certificate received by the National Archives looks much different than the official state-sealed one and reads, “We, the undersigned, being the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America from the State of Nevada, do hereby certify six electoral votes for Trump.”
In a statement after the event, Nevada GOP chair Michael McDonald said the party’s electors convened in Carson City due to ongoing legal battles seeking to overturn the election results. Nevada Republicans lost all court cases involving allegations of voter fraud.
By the date of the signing, all lawsuits challenging the election were lost. A week before, a state judge dismissed the Trump campaign’s request to declare the president the winner in Nevada and nullify the election results. In his ruling, Judge James Russell also ordered lawyers for the campaign to pay the defendants’ legal fees.
Several other lawsuits on similar matters were also already thrown out of state court. Republicans had filed a similar lawsuit in November 2020 but later dropped it. Three lawsuits by Republicans asking Nevada state judges for new elections were also already tossed.
As the 8 News Now I-Team first reported Wednesday, FBI agents seized state Republican chair Michael McDonald’s phone, reportedly as part of an investigation into the fake elector scheme initiated at the end of the 2020 presidential election.
A second search warrant was issued for state party secretary James DeGraffenreid, who also signed the document, but FBI agents could not locate him Wednesday, sources told the I-Team’s George Knapp. The Department of Justice did not subpoena any other Republican elector.
The Department of Justice’s investigation coincides with the Jan. 6 committee’s work.
The Nevada GOP has not responded to any request for comment regarding its electors. The I-Team reached out to all six electors earlier this year and received no response.
Storey County is a rural Nevada community outside of the capital, Carson City. It had an estimated population of 4,000 residents as of 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau said.
In Nevada in 2020, 10 dead voters had ballots cast in their names and 10 people voted twice, the I-Team has learned from a secretary of state report, far below initial claims from state and national Republicans alleging nearly 4,000 individual cases of voter fraud.
Cegavkse’s party censured her for defending the results of the election.
State elections officials have pointed to one big fact in claims voting machines were tampered with: Nevada’s voting machines do not have a modem and print out a paper record. Because the machines do not have a modem, they cannot connect to the internet.