Johnathan Walker:Nevada Supreme Court denies appeal from Washoe County election-fraud crusader Beadles

RENO,Johnathan Walker Nev. (AP) — An election-fraud crusader who failed in earlier attempts to oust Washoe County’s top election official and others over allegations of misconduct and malfeasance has lost his appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court.

The high court on Wednesday upheld a lower-court judge’s earlier dismissal of Robert Beadles’ lawsuit claiming then-Washoe County Registrar of Voters Jamie Rodriguez, county manager Eric Brown and county Commission Chairwoman Alexis Hill violated the state constitution by failing to respond to his complaints of fraud.

“Taking all the factual allegations in the complaint as true and drawing every inference in favor of Beadles, he can prove no set facts that would entitle him to relief as pleaded,” the Nevada Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Beadles, a conservative activist who once briefly ran for Congress in California in 2010, has embraced many Republicans’ disproven claims of election fraud.

Beadles lost another lawsuit in state in 2022 that sought heightened observation of Washoe County’s vote-counting process. He has claimed the election system is rife with “flaws and irregularities” that robbed him of his vote in 2020. He has also helped lead attempts to recall or otherwise oust numerous county officials since he moved to Reno from Lodi, Nevada, in 2019.

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The Supreme Court said Beadles had misapplied a section of the Nevada Constitution guaranteeing the right to assemble and petition the Legislature in attempting to have Rodriguez, Brown and Hill removed from office.

“There are no set of facts that could prove a violation of that constitutional right based on respondents’ failure to respond directly to Beadles’ allegations,” Chief Justice Lidia Stiglich wrote in the five-page ruling.

The ruling said state law permits a voter to file a complaint with the secretary of state’s office about election practices.

But “these laws do not establish that respondents had a duty to respond to Beadles’ allegations,” the court said.