Election called smooth, but problems could grow

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 | 9:52 a.m.

The Clark County Elections Department reported a mostly smooth operation during the Nov. 2 election, but the department's leader also warned of a few problems, including one that could require a law change to correct.

Larry Lomax, the county registrar, said only a handful of problems cropped up during the last election, the busiest in Clark County's -- and, it turned out, the nation's -- history. In Clark County, more than 545,000 votes were cast, a 79.9 percent turnout of eligible voters.

A handful of clerical errors in 72 precincts and discrepancies of one ballot between the computer count and the roster of voters in five precincts did not affect any race or ballot question, Lomax reported to the board of the Clark County Commission on Tuesday. There were 1,038 precincts in Clark County for the general election.

Lomax presented the elections results to the County Commission, which must certify the results, in a state-mandated process called the canvass. The commission accepted the results, which sparked no protests, in a 6-0 vote.

Lomax said the election went smoothly but was not perfect.

"In most areas we did very well. There are things we need to do better," he said.

One problem was the phone system for the elections department was overloaded with 35,000 calls on Election Day. Lomax suggested a new system might be needed to handle all the inquiries, many from voters.

Another issue was the number of poll watchers who flocked to the voting sites for what was a bitterly contested national election. Lomax said that at some sites, as many as 14 observers were on hand. The average site had three to five monitors, many from the Republican or Democratic parties or independent, nonpartisan groups.

Most of the poll watchers were from out-of-state, and many were attorneys, Lomax said. One "team leader" in charge of a poll called in tears because of disputes with the poll watchers, he said.

"We had to send the police to a couple of locations to break up disputes," he said. No arrests were made because of the disputes.

Lomax suggested that legislation might be needed to trim the number of poll watchers or at the very least to clarify what their legal rights are.

"We do need to develop some criteria to specify what it is they can or cannot do," he said.

Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates took issue with Republican poll watchers who, she said, had challenged voters in precincts in her district in the county's urban core. Gates said eight poll watchers of various parties were at one of the polls in her district.

"There were a lot," including one man "who was pretty awful," she said.

On Election Day at H.P. Fitzgerald Elementary School in North Las Vegas Atkinson Gates, a Democrat, yelled at Republican David Rahm while he was being interviewed by a television crew. She accused Rahm, who is white, of trying to intimidate black voters and told him he ought to get out of her part of town. Rahm, the vice president and general counsel of a Las Vegas caviar company, told her he was in the United States and he had every right to be where he was.

On Tuesday, Gates said, "People should have a right to watch. Democrats need poll watchers too. It was just a bit much."

Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey said the goal of any changes to local rules or state law should be to ensure that there is no interference with the voting process.

Gary Peck, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, said problems cropped up in Clark County and elsewhere in the state because of problems interpreting the election laws uniformly.

"There were no clear rules," he said.

Peck emphasized that he does not believe election officials here or in Carson City intentionally tried to interfere with the voting process, but the application of laws was inconsistent throughout the state, he said.

For example, in some counties nonpartisan poll watchers were able to wear T-shirts with their organizational logos on them, in other areas such as Clark County they were not, Peck said.

"We believe that nonpartisan activities within that 100-foot area are absolutely permissible," he said.

Peck said the ACLU would support Lomax or the County Commission going to the Legislature and asking for a clarification of the rules, but discouraging poll watchers is not the right way to approach the issue.

"There is an array of rules that need to be reformed and refined," he said. "We intend on our own initiative to go to the Legislature to advocate for various reforms. But I think having monitors and plenty of them was a good thing."

One reform that Lomax did not mention but Peck believes is important is to expand provisional voting ballots, used most frequently when a voter goes to the wrong precinct, to be expanded to cover state and local elections. In Clark County, those voters were able to vote only for the three federal seats -- president, senator and congress -- up for election.

Peck said Nevada was one of only six states in the country that comply with the national law to have provisional balloting but failed to extend those ballots to local or state races. In Clark County, voters cast 4,532 provisional ballots, Lomax said. Of those, 1,543 were accepted and counted toward the election totals, while 2,989 were rejected.

Lomax said any provisional ballot cast by a registered voter in the correct congressional district was counted.