Trump camp demands Nevada stop counting ballots over unproven trash can rumor

Former VP has widened his lead in Silver State as world awaits a winner

Trump campaign officials are filing a lawsuit intended to force election officials in Nevada to stop counting “illegal” ballots they claim were found in “trash cans” and fraudulently cast by “dead” people and others who left the area during the coronavirus pandemic.

Adam Laxalt, a former GOP state attorney general in Nevada, alleged during a press conference from Las Vegas on Thursday the campaign has heard about illegal ballots being found in “trash cans in apartment buildings” and alleged that some residents there received “18 ballots sent to their homes.”

But he and other Trump officials who spoke did not provide a shred of evidence, nor did they take assembled reporters’ questions.

“We knew these were unclear. We were told signatures would save us form all fraud,” said Mr Laxalt. “We have not been unable to observe these signatures or challenge a single mail-in ballot.”

Moments after the president’s team spoke in the desert, an anchor on typically friendly Fox News said: “We need to see actual evidence of these things.”

The former VP leads in the state by around 11,400 votes, according to the Associated Press.

He has widened his lead as voting continued on Thursday.

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Mr Laxalt said the campaign is seeking a federal court injunction to have officials stop counting “illegal” ballots, but said once deemed legal could be counted.

It is not clear who would deem any ballot illegal, if the Trump campaign, as he claimed, cannot observe the physical counting of ballots.

He and others in Las Vegas didn’t not say they have seen any bunches of ballots retrieved from any alleged trash cans, and they did not provide reporters a list of allegedly deceased people who may have had ballots cast in their name.

Elections experts for years have disputed Republicans’ claims that widespread voter fraud happens every year in the United States. But that did not stop Mr Trump from making it a plank of his 2020 re-election message.

On an earlier call with reporters, senior campaign aide Jason Miller declared “magical sacks of ballots popping up in corrupt democrat localities.”