Registrar calls primary a ‘historic election’

Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax formally delivered the Sept. 7 primary election results to the county commission Tuesday, calling the results a historic, if qualified, success.

"This has been a historic election in Nevada" because of the success of the so-called "paper trail" device attached to some voting computers, Lomax told the commission.

He said the Elections Department identified a handful of errors in the election canvass, which by law has to be submitted to the county commission before the same results go to Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller.

Lomax said clerical errors affected the votes of seven people, out of about 150,000 votes cast. Although the department does not know for sure what happened in those seven cases, none of the errors affected any races, he said.

"There is no such thing as a perfect election and there were flaws that of course we want to correct before the next elections," Lomax said.

The Clark County and Nevada races garnered national media attention because of the use of the new receipt-printing devices, which also brought election observers from throughout the country.

There are enough of the printers connected to voting machines to have all 740 voting sites with at least one during the general election, Lomax said. By 2006, federal law will require all the computerized voting machines to be connected to the machines.

"Everybody has to have a printer but we're not quite sure how to pay for that," Lomax said. He said it could cost $12 million or more to fully replace hundreds of the older machines that cannot be connected with printers with new machines that can, a cost that right now seems to be an unfunded federal mandate.

Lomax noted that Clark County now uses two types of voting machines, a distinction that makes Clark County unique nationally.

"Maybe we could sell the old machines to Florida," joked Commissioner Myrna Williams.

In other election related news:

"Early voting continues to prove it's a popular program with the voters," he said.

Mark DeStefano won the most votes for the post, but won them hours after a District Court judge declared he had failed to meet the residency requirement for his candidacy. DeStefano took 4,342 votes or 22.8 percent.

Second-place finisher James Dean Leavitt, 74 votes behind DeStefano, and third-place Gloria Sturman, with 3,928 votes, will appear on the November ballot.

Lomax said the vendor has promised to correct the problem, which cropped up several years ago.

"They've guaranteed it will not be a problem in the general election," he said.