Boulder City Council candidate wants recount in close primary

Friday, April 10, 2009 | 3:45 p.m.

Joe Roche

Duncan McCoy

Joe Roche, one of the losing candidates for Boulder City Council in Tuesday’s primary, said he will likely ask for a recount of votes cast for winner Duncan McCoy in hopes that enough errors are found to qualify Roche for a June runoff election.

Two at-large council seats were up for grabs.

McCoy was declared the outright winner of one seat by capturing a number of votes that was more than 50 percent of the number of people who cast ballots — but barely. In the final tally, 2,000 people cast votes for McCoy, which was 50.2 percent of the 3,983 voters.

That left the second- and third-place vote-getters, Cam Walker and Bill Smith, in a general election runoff on June 2 for the other seat. If McCoy had received just eight fewer votes, then Roche, who came in fourth, also would be in the runoff with McCoy.

“It’s the difference of me getting in the election or not,” Roche said.

McCoy said he would not be surprised or bothered if Roche asked for a recount.

“Joe’s worked as hard as anybody has,” McCoy said. “If I were in his shoes, I’d be considering it. He feels he needs to know for sure, and I’d like to know for sure, too.”

Nevada laws permit any losing candidate to pay for a recount of votes from three precincts.

Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said that three days after the Boulder City Council canvasses the votes at its meeting on April 14, anyone can demand a recount.

Roche would pay $600 to have the election department hand-count McCoy’s votes in three precincts of Roche’s choosing.

Normally, computers tally the votes from the electronic voting machines. For a recount, paper copies from the machines are printed and counted manually, along with the absentee mail-in votes, Lomax said.