Nevada Republicans vote to censure SOS Cegavske over voter fraud allegations

The Nevada Republican Party Central Committee has voted to censure and disassociate with the state’s GOP secretary of state, Barbara Cegavske, over claims that her office failed to do its job and “put the reliability of our elections in Nevada in question.”

Members of the central committee voted to approve the censure on a 126-112 vote on Saturday during the party’s spring meeting in Carson City, sources told The Nevada Independent. The censure also banned Cegavske from party endorsements or resources for “the intense dishonor her failures brought upon the Nevada Republican Party.”

A cover letter obtained by The Nevada Independent reiterates that the state party brought forward four boxes of evidence purporting to show tens of thousands of alleged examples of voter fraud that allegedly occurred in the 2020 election. The letter states that the state party saw a “surge in communications with sometimes vulgar messages” by individual Republicans saying they had left the party “claiming we did nothing to ensure voter integrity.”

“The irresponsible messaging of the Nevada Secretary of State, claiming, without investigating, that this election was error free, causing these attacks on our Nevada Republican Party,” the cover letter states.

The censure repeats various claims of voter fraud in Nevada made by the Trump campaign and state Republican Party, many of which originated from election challenges that lost in state court last year. Reasons for the censure are listed as a “failure to investigate election fraud, her dismissive public statements regarding election integrity concerns and her failure to ensure compliance with Nevada and federal election law.”

The censure cites a section of state law that deals with the removal of state and local party committee members, not rank-and-file registered party members. But central committee members voted to remove that section referring to removing Cegavske from the party from the censure resolution prior to the vote.

Cegavske’s office has publicly stated that the state has received no evidence of “wide-spread” fraud in the 2020 election. Her office also publicly responded to the state party’s drop off of alleged evidence, disputing the number of total Election Integrity Reports filed and promising that staff will “conduct a detailed examination of these reports.”

Cegavske, who previously served in the Assembly and state Senate, was the only Republican to win a statewide race in the 2018 midterm elections, narrowly beating Democratic candidate Nelson Araujo.

Representatives from the Nevada Republican Party and the secretary of state’s office did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from The Nevada Independent can be found here ***