Refusal to certify Washoe County, Nevada, election results sows distrust, advocates warn

A Nevada county’s rejection of the official results of two primary election recounts that yielded few changes from the original count should be seen as just the latest attempt to spread misinformation and sow distrust in the democratic process, say voting advocates.

Washoe County Commissioners on Tuesday voted 3-2 against certifying the results of an official recount of two races from Nevada’s June 9 primary. The board’s three Republicans —- Commissioners Michael Clark, Jeanne Herman and Clara Andriola —- voted against certification while Democratic Commissioners Alexis Hill and Mariluz Garcia voted in favor of certification.

Clark and Herman have now twice voted against certifying the results of Washoe County’s primary election. The duo also voted against certifying the county’s original canvas two weeks ago.

Andriola voted for certification of the original canvas but joined her Republican peers in opposition on Tuesday.

Washoe County Assistant District Attorney Nate Edwards, as legal counsel for the board, told the commissioners that not certifying election results in Nevada is “a little bit of uncharted water” and that any “next steps” would likely come from the secretary of state’s office.

Counties are required by law to canvas election results within five business days of the completion of a recount. Canvas is defined in Nevada Revised Statute as “a review of the election results by the board of county commissioners or the may

or and city council or the justices of the Supreme Court, by which any errors within the election results are officially noted and the official election results are declared.”

Edwards told the commissioners they have a duty to canvas but should “vote (their) conscience.” After a motion to certify failed 2-3, he advised the board to vote in the affirmative against certification, which they then did, 3-2.

Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar’s office did not respond to the Current’s request for comment Tuesday.

Project Democracy, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian group,” in March released a report pointedly titled “Election Certification Is Not Optional” that warned “even ultimately unsuccessful interference with certification — indeed, even mere threats not to certify — can amplify election conspiracy theories and further undermine public confidence.”

The report places the start of the recent focus on the election certification process as a means of undermining democracy in Wayne County, Michigan — where two of four members of the board of canvassers briefly refused to certify election results after the 2020 general election.

According to Project Democracy, at least 21 counties across eight states have since seen similar incidents happen.

“Each county board has a non-discretionary duty to certify and deliver the election results (there is no legal basis to refuse to do so),” a spokesperson for the group concluded in an email to the Current. “Any effort by election officials to subvert certification or to refuse to perform their duties could expose those officials to civil or criminal liability.”

After the 2022 midterms, two of three members of the Cochise County Board of Supervisors in Arizona refused to certify their election results. In response, the Arizona secretary of state sued the supervisors, who had acted against the recommendations of the county attorney, and a judge ordered them to reconvene and certify the results.

The Cochise supervisors reconvened and the results were certified in a 2-0 vote (because one of the supervisors did not attend the meeting). The two supervisors who caused the delay in certification were later investigated by the state’s attorney general and are now facing felony charges of conspiracy and interference with an election officer.

Voting rights advocates have applauded the swift and strong response in Arizona following the non-certification incident in Cochise.

“We should not normalize this,” says Hannah Fried, executive director of All Voting Is Local, which advocates for expanded voter access in eight states, including Nevada and Arizona. “This is abnormal.”

Fried, who spoke to the Current about the issue last week, believes there are legal enforcement mechanisms that can force certification in Nevada. She is more concerned about the broader implications.

“They are laying groundwork,” she said. “The intention isn’t to actually certify or not certify (the primary). The point is to question election results in November, to say, ‘There are improprieties that have been here since the primary.’”

She continued, “This is about setting precedent, so it doesn’t shock the conscience. But it should shock all of us.”

Fried, who has worked as an election advocate for 15 years, said that election denialism and election skepticism are sometimes viewed as “chaos for the sake of chaos” but should be viewed differently in light of the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The chaos of disinformation is to lay the groundwork for a fight that has no bottom,” she added.

That all of this is happening in Washoe County — the swingiest county of a swing state that might be crucial in this year’s federal elections — is not lost on observers. The Northern Nevada county in recent years has been a hotbed of election denialism and skepticism, much of it fueled by Robert Beadles, a prominent GOP donor and far-right activist known for touting conspiracy theories about voting, vaccines and minorities.

Beadles, on his Operation Sunlight website, said the non-certification “buys time for the courts to rule on whether or not a hand count should be done” and “allows time for them to investigate the massive manipulation of our election…” — referring to pending litigation he is backing.

Local elections officials have conceded there have been errors but none that influenced outcomes. Voters in one Reno precinct received mail ballots with the wrong races and had to be reissued new ballots. Voters who had opted out of receiving a mail ballot still received them.

“Washoe County elections made some mistakes,” acknowledged Kerry Durmick, Nevada director for All Voting Is Local, “but the same mistakes have been made in Lyon, in Humboldt. Their county commissioners are not treating them the same way.”

Durmick emphasized that no mistakes should be taken lightly, but that the proper avenue for addressing those issues is not delaying the ministerial step of certification, which has long been such a rote task that it never received public attention.

Added Fried, “There is no good faith reason not to certify.”

Commissioners deny being election deniers

Prior to the votes Tuesday, Andriola asked Edwards, the board attorney, questions about their obligation to vote and what could happen if they voted in opposition.

“I am not going to certify the vote,” she said afterward. “I believe it warrants further investigation, and hearing Mr. Edwards, this may give us that opportunity. I’m basing my vote on the fact that (Edwards) used the word ‘conscience’ and we have, not just today, but an ongoing concern (about elections). There has to be trust.”

“I am not an election denier,” she insisted.

Herman in comments from the dias acknowledged she has “a record of not approving the elections” but she did not further elaborate on her vote.

Clark in his comments pushed back on the characterization of him as an election denier.

“I’ve won my last six elections, so I couldn’t be an election denier,” he said, “but I’ve seen a lot of mismanagement, and that’s a different thing than denying what took place in an election. Mismanagement. People not understanding what they’re doing. Trying to wing it. Trying to use the NRS statute for their own personal gain. Telling half the story.”

Clark has said he did not receive his own ballot in the mail but received the ballot for someone who no longer lives in the country and had attempted unsuccessfully to remove themselves from the state’s voter roll. He has also pointed to acknowledged errors, such as a misprint on the sample ballot, as reasons why he does not trust the process.

“This is a missed opportunity for transparency,” he said. “The leadership of this board could have had samples, could have had a hand count, could have had a parallel count to check this, especially when somebody else was paying for it.”

Clark was referring to Beadles, the right-wing activist who funded the recounts whose results were being voted on Tuesday.

On the issue of hand counting ballots, Edwards noted that state law is clear that the process used for a recount has to be the same as the process used during the original tabulation — meaning the county couldn’t switch from machine tabulation to a hand count. The county could explore the option to hand count ballots for future elections, he added, but would have to contend with the “onerous” requirements set by the secretary of state’s office.

Additional flirting with election skepticism

Earlier in Tuesday’s meeting, Andriola suggested that election process issues were better left to the legislature to address.

Andriola expressed support for some election reforms, including a voter id requirement and automatic county-paid recounts for close races, but she said implementing such changes are beyond the power of a county commission and would have to be done at the state level by legislators (or, in the case of a proposed voter id requirement, by a vote of the people).

“Get folks in Carson City that understand that election reform is critical,” she said.

Clark in response to Andriola said he believes county commissioners “don’t need to wait for somebody in Carson City to do our job for us.”

“We’ve got lots of things we can do here,” he said. “Maybe we can’t ask for showing of id. Maybe we can’t do this, that or the next thing. But we have the ability to do lots of other things that will certainly clean up the process, that will certainly instill confidence in the voters, instead of saying we’re going to wait til Carson City fixes it.”

Clark said the commission can control who the county manager is, noting that the county manager is directly over the registrar of voters.

Andriola invited Mark Kampf, the former Nye County clerk who two years ago oversaw the rural county’s controversial attempts to use paper ballots and hand count, to give a presentation to the Washoe County Commission on June 25. Andriola suggested at the time she supported the idea of auditing being done via hand.

Durmick of All Voting Is Local said her group is concerned about attempts to move toward paper ballots because they can disenfranchise voters who benefit from more accessible machines and create longer lines at polling places, which also makes it more difficult for people to cast ballots.

Primary recount results

In Washoe County, recounts were requested by two primary candidates — Mark Lawson, a Republican who challenged Andriola in Washoe County Commission District 4, and Paul White, a candidate for Washoe County School Board District G.

Neither race was considered particularly close after the original count, and unsurprisingly their outcomes did not change because of the recount.

Lawson had about 1,700 fewer votes than Andriola in the original vote count. The recount saw him lose one vote.

In the nonpartisan school board race, White gained one vote — nowhere near enough to change the outcome of the original results, which placed him fourth in a field of seven. White received 12% of votes compared to incumbent trustee Diane Nicolet’s 18% and fellow challengers Perry Rosenstein and Alicia Woo’s 35% and 15%, respectively. White would have had to gain more than 2,300 votes to move onto the general election as the second place finisher.

Another Washoe County race — the nonpartisan primary for Reno City Council Ward 1 — did not have a recount despite just 15 votes separating two candidates. Lily Baran, a progressive candidate who placed third in the race where the top two advance to a runoff, initially requested a recount but withdrew her request after being inundated with criticism for accepting money from Beadles to pay for the recount. She told media outlets she had been convinced she might face jail time for accepting the money, which some argued constituted an illegal campaign contribution by Beadles.

In Nevada, the cost of a recount falls to the candidates who request them. Beadles provided the funding for Lawson and White’s recounts and had offered to pay for Baran’s.

The day after Baran requested the recount stop, she attempted to withdraw her withdrawal and wanted the county to commence with the recount, but elections administrators denied that request because regulations state a withdrawal cannot be revoked.

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By April Corbin Girnus, Nevada Current
July 10, 2024
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