Election ‘99 almost error-free; voter turnout light

Wednesday, May 5, 1999 | 9:56 a.m.

The only snafu in a rather uneventful election night vote-counting process occurred when an election official at an elementary school polling place could not find a janitor to lock up the building after the polls closed.

As a result, the ballot box at Wasden Elementary School, 2831 Palomino Lane, remained in limbo for about two hours Tuesday night.

"We were getting ready to send someone out because we couldn't reach them by phone," said recently appointed Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax. "If we had known about the problem, we would have sent someone to watch the school so that the box could have been delivered sooner."

The Wasden ballot box, containing, among others, the ballot that Las Vegas mayoral front-runner Oscar Goodman had cast, was the last to arrive at election headquarters in a warehouse on Cheyenne Avenue east of Martin L. King Boulevard.

Still, all of the votes in the primary election that had just under a 23 percent turnout were counted by 9:30 p.m.

On Tuesday, 44,288 of the county's 321,000 registered voters went to the polls, which translates to 13.80 percent.

In-office and early voting prior to Tuesday netted an additional 6.22 percent and mail-in votes added another 2.8 percent to bring the total turnout to 73,254 voters or 22.82 percent of registered voters.

In a number of locations, the turnout was woefully poor, election officials said.

"It was very, very slow -- about three (voters) per hour," said Blanca Vazquez an election official at the Silverado High School polling place in Henderson where precinct 1127 was located.

Michelle Morris of the polling place at Bonanza Road and Lamb Boulevard where precincts 2071 and 2074 were located, said: "It was the smallest turnout I have seen, especially with a mayoral race on the ballot."

Lisa Ladd, team leader at the Dooley Elementary polling place in Henderson, where precincts 1092 and 1093 were located, said only about 300 ballots were cast -- pretty slow for that location.

"I guess we are saving our strength for the presidential race next year," Ladd mused.

There were some busy polling places, however, like the West Sahara Library, where team leaders Joe Boteilho and Steve Immerman said at times there were lines of people waiting to use the 13 voting machines for precincts 1031, 6026 and 6036.

"We had well over 500 ballots cast by about 3 p.m.," Immerman said. "We were one of the busiest (polling places) in Las Vegas."

Lomax said the electronic vote-counting machinery worked without a hitch. He credited his department with having "a good plan" that moved things along smoothly.

"The turnouts in the cities that had mayoral races (Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite) were much better than in North Las Vegas and Henderson," Lomax said.

"No doubt having a race for mayor in Las Vegas in the general election will mean more of a turnout. Otherwise, in some parts of the city, it would have been just one city council race and a municipal judge's race and in other parts it would have been just a judge's race on the ballot."