LAS VEGAS — A woman using a megaphone shouted at voters outside the Desert Breeze Community Center as early voting began in Clark County on Wednesday, October 21, prompting a police response and a warning, according to officials and witnesses, the Las Vegas Focal reported on October 22.

Source: Las Vegas Focal

Witnesses said the woman spent hours in the parking lot, where video showed her moving around and yelling at people entering and leaving the polling site. The confrontation, including an altercation with a man leaving the center, took place more than 100 feet from the voting center, the Focal reported. Las Vegas television station KVVU (FOX5), in Gray Television coverage of the same incident, likewise reported that Las Vegas police responded to the Desert Breeze Community Center after a woman with a megaphone confronted early voters outside the polling site.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers responded and issued her a warning, which she followed, police said. The available accounts do not indicate that the woman was arrested or charged.

Where protest ends and intimidation begins

Athar Haseebullah of the ACLU of Nevada said an election observer contacted him about the scene. He said the woman was criticizing voters over a reproductive-rights ballot question, calling them “baby killers,” and that in another video clip she shouted an insult at a voter carrying a cane. In Haseebullah's assessment, the physical confrontation shown in video amounted to battery, which he said is not protected speech, and voter intimidation also falls outside First Amendment protections. Those characterizations are his assessment, not a police finding.

Clark County law bars electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place, and the reported confrontation occurred beyond that boundary. Bill Young, a Republican candidate for Clark County recorder who was present, said he did not believe the woman violated the law, though he acknowledged the protest could be disruptive to voters seeking to avoid confrontation.