Clark County governments on Thursday voted to certify this month’s primary elections after auditing found no tabulation errors, and determined that the fewer than 100 voter discrepancies found wouldn’t have altered any of the race results.
Registrar of Voters Lorena Portillo, the county’s chief election official, said that the elections process proceeded with no hiccups.
“We were very happy to see voters going out to vote using our new equipment successfully,” Portillo told the Las Vegas Review-Journal about new machines that allow voters to print out their ballot after they make their choices, letting them insert it into tabulators themselves.
She told Clark County commissioners that 276,494 county residents voted in the recent elections. That translated to an 18.3 percent turnout rate among the roughly 1.5 million active and inactive registered voters.
“We hope that we see many more in the general,” she told the Review-Journal about the upcoming midterm elections in November.
Commissioners voted 6-0 to affirm the election results, a process formally known as canvassing.
Portillo reported 82 voting discrepancies in Clark County, including 15 voters who left the ballot booth before voting and 55 people who voted at the wrong location.
Machines were audited three times: days before early voting, and a day before and after Election Day, Portillo said. No issues were found.
The primaries confirmed that mail voting remained the most popular form of casting a ballot in Clark County.
Nearly 60 percent of voters mailed back or dropped off their ballots. Turnout during two weeks of early voting was 22.6 percent, while 18.9 percent of voters cast a ballot on Election Day.
Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas clerks also presented the canvassing results to their city councils, which also voted Thursday to certify the process.
Henderson results mean that its mayor’s race will go into a runoff election after Mayor Michelle Romero fell less than a percentage point short of getting more than 50 percent of the vote, which would’ve won her reelection outright. She will face off against former Henderson police Chief Hollie Chadwick in November.
Washoe County commissioners voted 4-1 earlier in the day to certify that county’s elections.
Local results proceed to Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar for review.
Once the elections are fully certified, counties will begin preparing ballots for the midterm elections, Portillo noted.
Thursday’s special meetings in Clark County were brief. Officials praised the clerks for their teams’ work.
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.
