City Council - Special Meeting

We're gonna wait another minute for Francis to join us and then we'll get started. The June 18th, This meeting has been properly noticed and posted in compliance with the open meeting law. These proceedings are being video recorded and can be viewed live on City of Las Vegas TV on Cox Cable Channel 2. You could also watch the meeting live online and access other city content by visiting lasvegasnevada.gov slash connect. For public comment related to the items on the agenda, citizen participation, and public hearing items, we have available a speaker card that you can complete and submit to the city clerk. Cards are available in the clerk's office or at the rear of the chambers. If you do not submit a card, it does not prevent you from speaking under public comment, citizen's participation, or specified public hearing items. If there is anyone present today that is in need of hearing impaired equipment, please see the city clerk's staff. And please note, if you are parked in the parking garage across the street, a self-validation machine is located in the foyer between council chambers and the security desk you walk through to enter these chambers. You must have your ticket with you to use the machine. If you do not have your ticket, see security personnel when exiting for a validation coupon. Before we proceed, will everyone rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? I am going to ask the youth mayor to please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Will you step forward? Would you state your name first?

Sophia Schaefer.

And you are youth mayor of what? Clark County. All right. All right. Please lead us in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Agenda item number four. Public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters on the agenda for action. The amount of time any single speaker is allowed may be limited. Please say which agenda item you will be speaking about. All comments made will be cross referenced to those specific items. If anyone submitted a speaker card or who wishes to speak under this portion of the agenda, please come to the podium, state your name for the record. This is your opportunity to address the council, but the council is not able to respond or engage in dialogue. You may also address the council at the end of the meeting during citizen participation regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council. Although you are not prohibited from speaking during both public comment periods, we kindly ask that your comments are not repetitive. We will set the time at two minutes, not two million minutes, two minutes. Does anybody wish to come forward? Seeing no one, we will now move on to agenda item number five, discussion for possible action regarding the certification of campus selection returns for the June 9th, 2026 municipal primary elections. Dr. Holmes.

Good afternoon, mayor and council. Thank you for having me. My name is Dr. Luann Holmes. I'm the city clerk for the city of Las Vegas, and I am submitting for your acceptance and certification the campus results for the 2026 primary municipal election. For the 2026 primary election, there was an active voter registration of 419,556 voters. We had a total turnout of 76,856 ballots cast, which results in an 18.32% turnout. Of those who participated, is it echoing to more than me? I beg your pardon? Of all those who participated, 43,889, or 10.56%, voted by mail ballot. 18,351, or 4.37%, voted during the early voting period. And 14,497, or about 3.46%, took advantage of one of our many vote centers that were available to our citizens throughout all of Clark County on election day. The Registrar of Voters identified 15 discrepancies in the 76,856 ballots cast. Three voters fled the voting machines prior to casting their ballots, ten voters voted on the wrong precinct, and there were two reactivation errors. However, there were no tabulation errors in the 236 precincts in the primary. 128 provisional ballots were cast during the election. 119 were verified and counted. Nine were not accepted. Audits were performed in accordance with NRS 293B. And as a member of the Accuracy Certification Board, I can attest that we certified the functionality of the tabulation system, including the mail readers, the ballot marking devices, and the Agilis mail ballot processing machine. All systems were found to be 100% accurate in tabulation of the votes and processing of mail ballots. These tests were performed before the start of early voting on the day before election day and a post-election test the day after the election. We received the campus results from Clark County Election Department late yesterday evening. And as the duly appointed election official for the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, it's my honor to submit for your consideration the outcome of the 2026 primary municipal election. I respectfully request your acceptance and certification of these results, which reflect the voice of your constituents and uphold the integrity of our electoral process. I can answer any questions that you have.

Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from members of the council? Ms. Summers-Armstrong? Yes, Ms. Kelly.

Thank you, Mayor. Having it be my first election to listen to this certification, I am... Very impressed with what I'm interpreting as a whole lot of work on you and your team's part to ensure the integrity of the election. Might you just very briefly share with me your auditing, not the steps per se, but the process that you go through so that others who may be listening today or in the audience, and if it's their first time, have an appreciation as well.

Sure, absolutely. The Accuracy Certification Board, actually all city clerks that are involved in Clark County and the Election Department, we all do this together. It's performed out of the Election Department. I'm sorry, my name's Luann Holmes for the record. And what's really nice about the process is you do it three times. And what it's doing is you're trying to consistently replicate the same results. So we work with dummy data and what we're testing is not only the integrity of the equipment that they use for everything from sorting ballots to reading ballots, all the equipment, but we're also certifying that none of the hash calcs, which is a time stamp or sort of an electronic signature on software to make sure that the software hasn't changed. And we're really making sure that that process stays intricately the same for three tests. We tested about a few days before early voting. We tested the day before election. And then we close it out the day after election. We do the test again. If there was any sort of problem where the equipment had been altered with or the data had been you know, misaligned, we'd be able to find it in that testing.

I appreciate the explanation. I know, Dr. Holmes, that you and your team are often, you know, seen as the rule makers and We see your signature on important documents and those things. But I'd like to suggest that you and your team are one of the most important functions of city government. And if you ever feel unappreciated, I'm certain that this will be a quick meeting. There may not be anything in the newspaper. Because until there's problems, no one worries. But you're making sure and your team are making sure there aren't problems and that you're doing things according to not only Nevada Revised Statutes, but that ethically you're doing things the way that they need to be done with the integrity so that we are feeling very confident in a free and fair election. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, Ms. Diaz.

Thank you, Ms. Kelly. I appreciated your question.

Yeah. Thank you to Councilwoman Kelly and Dr. Holmes. I know that we've updated our system somewhat for this electoral cycle. What was new to me voting in person was seeing my ballot completely print in front of me and having it to hand carry and get scanned. Did that... change in process also accelerate how expediently we were able to tabulate and count votes? And can you, I guess, speak about the efficiencies that the change in system has hopefully created for the voting process?

So we won't be able to see that, really tell what the change in efficiencies are until we get to the general. So we have at least two elections to really take a look at that data. But I can tell you just from initial results, it did speed up the process. And it made it not just a little more accessible to people, but I think it helped stifle some of the fears of, if I don't put my ballot in that scanner to be counted, what if something happens to it? Or what if the paper roll that we used to have in the past isn't up to date? And I think bringing the voter more into that role and being able to see the processes as they roll out I think it's a huge benefit for the voters. But on the processing side, I really do think that we're going to be able to get our data quicker. We won't be having to wait that full 10 days to do our Canvas. And the results get back out to the public quicker, which is really nice. If you looked at the stats, I put up some of the results throughout the last two weeks from Election Day until now. And one of the things that I saw was it wasn't just Clark County. It was all the counties in Nevada were able to post results quicker. They are able to have really detailed account for what's still outstanding, how did people vote. And that's really what the public, I think, wants to know. We don't have the winners at election evening. I totally get that. But they do want to know, like, tell us what the progress is and how valid is that progress?

Awesome. I look forward to seeing if there's more telling information in the November elections. Me too. I know usually most of the nation is waiting for Nevada's numbers to get tabulated to determine races. And so it'll be nice to hopefully have that expeditiously accounted for.

Thank you.

Yes. Ms. Armstrong. Thank you. You were speaking clearly but I wasn't hearing clearly earlier and you had given some data points and you had spoken about the number of, at the very beginning you talked about three, the number was three and I missed it. I didn't, before early voting.

I was talking about the 15 discrepancies.

I think the 18% in Howard broke down, 10% mail-in.

Yeah, so if you could just kind of go back just to the first part of your data.

So we had 76,856 ballots casted, and that's a turnout of about 18.32%. And then of those ballots that were cast, 43,889, which is about 10.5%, were by mail ballot. 18,351, or 4.37, voted during early vote. And 14,497 voted, which is about that 3.46%, took advantage of voting on election day at one of the centers.

Thank you. That was the piece.

Thank you. First, let me thank you and congratulate you for the extraordinary work that you do. And probably what I'm going to ask now would be best discussed over a cup of coffee, but the frustration I have is the lack of participation in our voting process. When you have 18% of those that are eligible to vote actually show up to vote, where in Nevada it is so easy, between mail-in ballots and early voting all over the community, and then election day voting, which is all over the community. I don't know what more you could have done, and that means the city, you had voting parties and everything else that you could possibly think of in order to encourage people to come out and vote. Is there anything that we are missing here that the city could be doing to encourage people to exercise the most sacred right of being an American citizen? And that is voting for your elected officials.

Absolutely. And that's part of, we have a pretty strong civic engagement and voter education program that we've implemented. We have great community partners. As you saw, the raters came down. We're looking at partnering with not only nonprofits to help get the word out. We offer voter registration drives, which I talked to Councilwoman Kelly at length about. And then we have partnerships with like UNLV. I was super excited to see that UNLV is coming right across the street because we partnered a lot with them about getting the young voters educated. I know that in my era, I learned a lot about civic engagement from my parents. But that's not necessarily strong in the school systems now. And so we've even created a couple programs. And Lance Downs Covington from our office has actually got to go out to a couple of the different high schools and implement that and talk to them about why the local legislative process is really the closest to the people and why it's important that you know not only who to vote for, like who's available and where do you live, but what does that do for you? How does it help build community? We will, I would love to sit down over coffee and we'll talk about it, but yes, we could, we can even do more.

Well, I thank you so much for everything that you did to give us the sense that we have a free and fair election in this community. It's very, very important. And with that, Mayor Pro Tem, may I have a motion?

Thank you, Madam Mayor. It's a great pride. I will move to approve.

Please vote. Agenda item number six, citizen participation. Public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters within the jurisdiction of the city council. No subject may be acted upon by the city council unless that subject is on the agenda and is scheduled for action. If you wish to be heard, come to the podium. Give your name for the record. The amount of discussion on any single subject will be limited to two minutes. This is your opportunity to address the council, but as you are aware, the council is not able to respond or engage in dialogue. Are there any members of the public who wish to speak under this portion of the agenda? Seeing and hearing none, this special city council meeting is adjourned.