Editorial: Witch hunt on Ferguson a mistake

Saturday, Sept. 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

DESPITE the lynch-mob mentality surrounding the second botched election in less than a month for Assembly District 1, some perspective is needed on the county Registrar of Voters office.

Clark County instituted its first full-scale run of computerized voting Sept. 3 in a changeover from the cumbersome punch-card system. Republican challengers for the District 1 race, Jeff Knight and Anne DiMartini, encountered enough irregularities to merit a second election. Last week DiMartini won by one vote, but a single-vote irregularity surfaced that negated the outcome. That means a third election will be held.

It must be frustrating for voters and the candidates to endure three trials at the ballot box. The delays seriously cut down on time to campaign for the general election, now about a month away.

But calls for Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson to resign in the wake of these mistakes are unjustified. Ferguson inherited a mess in that department and has done a Herculean job of cleaning it up. Vote tabulations and auditing are now performed by outside agencies, avoiding potential election department conflicts. And fraudulent listings of voter addresses have been stopped.

Many of the errors detected in the Sept. 3 election would have been missed before Ferguson took office. The point is the errors were found and admitted to. That in itself is a step forward.

When Ferguson took office, she said it would take at least four years to straighten out the system. After only two years, she has noticeably improved the operation. We think she deserves the time to finish the job.