Donald Trump's campaign has filed a lawsuit against Nevada election officials, alleging they "intentionally coordinated with Democratic activists" by keeping the polls open late during early voting.
So many people lined up to vote early last Friday in Nevada that officials kept some polls open until 10 p.m. local time — hours later than they were scheduled to close.
The Election Day lawsuit, first reported by CNN's Jim Sciutto, requests votes cast after polls were supposed to close on Friday shouldn't be "co-mingled" with other votes.
In an emergency court hearing Tuesday, Nevada Judge Gloria Sturman denied Trump's lawyer's request for poll workers to preserve the early voting records from the polling places in question, partly because they're already required by law to do so.
"I am not going to issue any order," Sturman told a Trump campaign attorney in what was an at-times fiery exchange. "I'm not going to do it."
It's unclear what legal step the Trump campaign will take next.
Republicans have spent the past few days denouncing the election officials' actions in Nevada.
To open a rally for the Republican presidential nominee in Reno on Saturday, Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald accused workers of keeping the polling place open "so a certain group could vote." Critics said the group to which he was referring was Latino voters, who came out in droves in the state's early voting. Polls have shown Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with a significant advantage in the voting bloc.
"It's being reported that certain key Democratic polling locations in Clark County were kept open for hours and hours beyond closing time to bus and bring Democratic voters in," Trump said at the rally in Nevada on Saturday. "Folks, it's a rigged system. It's a rigged system, and we're going to beat it. We're going to beat it."
But as Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin told The Associated Press, allowing everyone in line when the polls close to vote is the law.
"If there's a line when closing time comes, we just keep processing voters until there's no more line," he said. "We're flexible because we want people to vote."
Nevada state law says every person in line when the polls close must be able to vote.
"The Legislature hereby declares that each voter has the right ... to vote on Election Day if the voter is waiting in line at his or her polling place to vote before 7 p.m. and the voter has not already cast a vote in that election," the law reads.
The law further defines that "a person is waiting to vote at the hour of closing the polls if the person (a) is physically in line waiting to vote; or (b) has entered the polling place."
While polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day in Nevada, early voting closing times can vary, according to a statement from Clark County. The latest polling place was scheduled to close at 9 p.m. on Friday, but people in line already were allowed to vote.
In a statement on Tuesday, Charles Muñoz, the Trump campaign's Nevada state director, said officials' decision to let people vote on Friday "should be troubling to anyone who is interested in free and fair elections."
Ned Foley, director of Ohio State University's Election Law @ Moritz, wrote a post for Mediumabout the history of keeping polls open for people to vote.
"It's one of the most basic principles of electoral democracy," Foley wrote. "If you go to the polls when they are open, and you are a registered and qualified voter, then as long as you wait in line, you are entitled to cast your ballot even if the line is so long that you must wait until after the scheduled time for the polls to close."
When he addressed the lawsuit on Fox News Tuesday, Trump had a different view.
"They brought a lawsuit and it sounded like a good one to me so I let them to bring it," he said. "We have to keep the system honest. We have a very, very serious situation with the whole process, and I've been talking about the rigged system for a long time."