A historic disaster is brewing in Nye County,” ACLU Nevada executive director Athar Haseebullah said in a statement after watching the first several hours of ballot counting.
Nye County, an old silver mining region between Las Vegas and Reno, is home to about 50,000 residents, including 33,000 registered voters.
Trump won 69% of the vote in Nye County even as President Joe Biden won Nevada by about 33,500 votes.
Nye County wanted to start counting its early ballots before Election Day rather than risk missing the state’s Nov. 17 certification deadline.
The most populous county in the continental U.S. to rely exclusively on hand-counting is Owyhee County, Idaho, which has one-fifth of the registered voters as Nye County.