Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning. It's 10 o'clock on June 18th, 2026. This is the Washoe County Board of Commissioners board meeting. And I appreciate everyone being here. So what we're going to do now is have a salute to the flag. Commissioner Clark, would you be so kind?

Thank you.

We'll move now to roll call, please.

Chair Andriola? Present. Vice Chair Garcia? Here. Commissioner Hill? Here. Commissioner Clark?

Present.

Commissioner Herman is appearing by phone. ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE?

ARE YOU THERE?

ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE? ARE YOU THERE?

ARE YOU THERE?

And I'm Yvonne Strickland, Deputy Clerk. Madam Chair, you have a quorum.

Thank you so much. What I'd like to do now is just take a quick moment to ask DA Large if he would share where we're at with any pertinent information to today's meeting. Easy for me to say, to today's meeting.

Thank you, Chair. Michael Large, Washoe County District Attorney's Office, for the record. Last night, we became aware of a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction motion that had been filed in the second judicial district court seeking to compel this canvas to not occur. And we became aware of it last evening. As I stated, my staff worked to get a response on file. We were preparing that this morning. However, at 8.30 this morning, the court issued an order denying the petition for temporary restraining order, finding that there was no grounds and that the petitioner had failed to state with sufficient clarity or detail to permit the court to comprehend the basis of his claim. And so there is nothing stopping this canvas from proceeding.

So we can proceed with the meeting in short. Thank you. We'll move now to public comment.

Manager Thomas. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is item number three, public comment, and comment heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person, and it may pertain to matters both on and off the commission agenda. Unused time may not be allocated to other speakers. The commission will also hear public comment during individual action items with comment limited to three minutes per person. Comments that should be made to the commission as a whole and virtual public comment may be taken when facilities are available.

Thank you. First up is Mary Richardson, followed by Maureen McElroy.

Good morning. My name is Mary Richardson, for the record. Today I speak in support of your enthusiastic and joyful vote to accept the canvas of the vote. While it is your job and your duty to vote yes, I encourage you to do so enthusiastically and joyfully. And I'll tell you why. This election, voters marked a paper ballot and then cast it by scanning it into the ballot scanner. There was a great deal of comment on the new system. Poll workers found it an easy system to monitor. Voters I spoke with were surprised about their positive response to the experience of actually having a paper ballot and being the one responsible for scanning it into the machine. Trained observers commented on the professionalism of the poll workers. First timers were impressed with how smooth the voting process went. I heard the phrase, well-oiled machine, more than once. Observers also commented on the way the managers addressed problems quickly, efficiently, and effectively. They got on the phone, got instructions on how to solve the problem, and solved it. Even when there was a little chaos, because chaos does happen, it was quickly and efficiently resolved. In the care of the ballots themselves, every live ballot is either under lock and seal or under bipartisan security at all times, from the time it becomes a live ballot to the very end of its existence. And finally, the people I worked with are some of the most dedicated and conscientious people I know. They work every day to protect your vote. And the energy on election night as the results came in to the registrar of voters gives me goosebumps even now, just thinking about it. These people take their job as protectors of the integrity of your vote seriously, very seriously. That's why I can add one more aspect to your yes vote, and that's integrity. Yes, you can cast your vote on their report with enthusiasm, joy, integrity.

Thank you. Thank you. Maureen McElroy followed by Tammy Holt Still.

Good morning Commissioners and Madam Chair. For the record my name is Maureen McElroy. I know there's a lot of worry and trepidation these days regarding voting processes. Concerns have been voiced all the way from registering to vote to the final counting and securing of the ballots. I would like to take a moment to say a few words about what I've seen done about this. I've taken the opportunity to attend meetings where registrar voters Andrew McDonald and his staff have carefully explained the processes, safeguards, and innovations that have been put into place to make our voting as seamless, safe, fair, and secure as possible. The ROV website has been updated and contains a host of information to educate and enlighten voters, such as a link to track one's ballot. information about updates to ADA accessible voting, including the new curbside voting for people with mobility issues, information about how to use the new voting machines, which allow the voter to print their own ballot, a paper copy in which they can verify their choices in black and white, and then scan into a secure box. The new website has a results dashboard that allows voters to see up-to-date voting results, election data, turnout numbers and archived election results. All of this was done to inform voters and help allay worries they might have about the process and their vote. I know you commissioners are already aware of all the work that has been done to make our voting processes as safe, verifiable, and transparent as possible. But I feel compelled to state these things out loud as there are still many who doubt our election integrity. Our voting processes are solid. So thank you, Registrar voters Andrew McDonald. Thank you to his entire team for the work they've done. and continue to do to have safe, fair, legal elections. And thank you for this moment to comment. I appreciate it.

Tammy Holtzstill, followed by Nicholas St. John.

Good morning. Tammy Hiltz still for the record. Good morning. Good morning. I am here because of the fact that after seeing the news article about the 15,000 undeliverable boats, seeing how many people voted within district five, I paid over $600 for 22,000 records for the Republican party and the You either disenfranchise these people because of the sample ballot, which I joined in filing the complaint on, or the other issue is I got ripped off because there aren't 22,000 voters in our district. There's a problem. There has been a problem. We told you about it. We talked to you about it. And it was dismissed. So we filed a complaint. I joined the complaint. Now, did that shoot me in the foot? due to the fact that when you put your paper ballot, when you go to those machines and you put that paper ballot in that other machine, knowing as a retired state employee who did the motor fuels tax program, that things can be manipulated through the computer system on a day-to-day basis. Seen it, know it, feel it, done it. I don't trust you guys. I've seen how you've worked, and I don't believe the system is correct. I'm not a sore loser. I lost. That's not a problem. The people decided. But when you add Catherine's votes and my votes together, they almost equal Mr. Pierce's. votes starts to make you question what's really going on in the background. I'm a numbers person and I play with the numbers and I see because that's what I did as a tax examiner. So right now I am following up with this. I am still saying for the record like I did the last two times that the voter registrar's person should not be placed in that seat. It should be a voted seat under oath of office and penalty of law. because there's a lot of covering up that's being done and we've seen it. I have felt it for nine years. I have seen the corruption and it is still here. This proves it. Thank you.

Thank you. Nicholas St. John, followed by Kate Vineyard. And Mr. St. John has documents to be distributed to the board.

For the record, Nicholas St. John, if you can see this or not. It's up there where everybody can see it. So, this is a graph. This is a graph. I run the data from the Secretary of State database every day, and what we find is that after the close of early voting on June 5th, you would think that the fact that all this is done by SD cards and it's put into a tabulator, you would think that you'd be able to take all of those cards, process them into a tabulator, and have them done in literally a couple hours. And yet, this graph shows that on the 8th, there were a number of votes that were added, and you'll see that on the chart. Then on the 10th, there were 73 ballots that were removed from third party early voting and put some, it looks like they were put into Republican and Democrat ballots for early voting. Then on the 12th, a whopping 230 votes or ballots were removed from third party and 115 each were put into the Democrat party. You have that in the document in front of you. Then it goes for three days and then as of yesterday, there were another, I think, 13 votes removed from or that were added to the third party and then 11 or 13 were removed. So this shows that there's some kind of activity well after the close of June 5th when early voting completed. So what my request was from the courts was to ask you guys to have the ROV bring those 2,000 essentially roughly 2,000 ballots early voting that's now in paper because it was done with the ballot marketing devices bring them into this chamber and count to let us know exactly how many ballots were cast early voting by third parties While the courts have ruled that I didn't provide substantial enough evidence, I don't know what more I could produce other than something I don't have access to. Before you canvass, I think you need to have an answer to this. Where do those 230 ballots come from? Where do they go? Why do they end up in the Republican and Democrat party? You have the power to ask the ROV to bring those ballots into this chamber and spend about 30 minutes doing a count. The question is, are you concerned about the integrity of this election or not enough to actually do that? You're not required until 11.59 p.m. tomorrow night to actually submit the canvas. So you have plenty of time to do this. It's not like you don't have enough time. Thank you.

Thank you. Kate Vineyard, followed by Lynn Gillespie. Thank you.

Yes.

hate vineyard for the record i didn't work in the polls but i wanted to know what was going on and so i had two tools at my disposal i had the nevada secretary of state and i had the washoe register of voters the information i was getting out of that was extremely unreliable and out of date Even last night, it says 49.9% of the ballots were processed. It says that the remaining number of ballots are 63,998. And so, I have questions about the reliability of the data that's put forth for all of the voters who are not involved specifically in a poll watching this information. And I want to know, where are those ballots? And I also am interested to know more about the curing process, because every day I would look and see what was going on, and the numbers didn't change, the numbers didn't change, the numbers didn't change. And all of a sudden, they really changed. What happened? So there's just too many questions for a person who's outside of the registrar's office to know what really happened in this. And so I'm hoping that you guys could help answer why this information was so flawed. If you guys have everything already done, how come it says there's 63,000 votes still outstanding? It's just my question. Thank you.

Lynn Gillespie, followed by Oscar Williams.

Okay, I'll make this one quick. I have worked really hard as all of us have in this room on this election. I've been on social media almost every day and I just want to let you know there are a lot of people out there who really don't trust the system or the people on the boards, the city council or the county commission. They feel cheated and many of them don't vote because they figure out if they think it's already a done deal. Just wanted to let you know.

Thank you. Oscar Williams followed by Cliff Nellis.

Good morning, thank you. I'm moving a little slow, as you saw. I noticed there's a number of races that are kind of close. Mare and District 40, I think it is, Rybar's race, some others. And we're still waiting for the official final results, so it's kind of exciting. And yet, whatever the result is, and some of, I guess, with respect to what Mr. St. John was presenting, I want to talk about something that I've mentioned to you before. It is that the Nevada Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court have affirmed your right to vote as protected speech. And at no point does that ebb and flow on the topic of the day, okay? Some people may counsel you that your vote on the canvas is somehow ministerial, non-discretionary, only if there's no evidence to suggest otherwise. But when there is evidence that you must pause and go, well, gee, what do we do about that? If you ignore it, you're neglected of duty. You have to be the front line of us with the register of voters and investigate issues. It may be system-wide, it may be individual races, it may be components of the system. That's up for you to determine. And in that regard, I encourage you to vote your conscience There's nothing stopping you. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, okay? Another part of that, let me indulge that just for a second. You can approve, delay, or deny, right? But there's a third choice. You can hire someone in a panel, a grand or petite jury, pursuant to Nevada Constitution Article 4, Section 20. So I recommend a petite jury, smaller, faster. Give them some money. Give them a place to meet. Give them some security. And give them a mission and the evidence to say, solve this. Fix this so that the public knows that the election was true and accurate. And then you can certify the true vote cases as you're your warrant. By the way, I was so impressed in the agenda that you added that language regarding NRS 293387. What is noting the discovery of the error, right? What does that mean? And how would you know if there's an error if you're not being told by the register of voters because you're not investigating, you're not an investigative body, that's why you need to summon in the panel a grand and petite jury. Please consider it as option number three or four of your choices. Thank you. Have a great day.

Thank you. Cliff Nellis, followed by Penny Brock.

Cliff Nellis, for the record, in 2024, I was very active in discovering, trying to discover all the voter fraud. And as I said before back then, congratulations on your Democrat-run operation of total fraud. You guys know it. There's no way to see, there's no transparency, there's no way to see what goes on in the machine. And there's one way to find out, just like I said in 2024. And I kinda like these new scanned ballots. It's a lot easier to read than these tapes. It's an improvement. But you haven't hand-counted them. I use the machine, and then the guy says, oh, don't worry, because I asked him. I said, how do I know that's recording what I put in there? It's just a machine. Oh, it's audited. You know what the audit was, I think, in 2024? From the Secretary of State, you have to audit 119 votes out of over 100,000, I think, in this county. That's like 1 tenth of 1%. You know what a real audit is? It's 20%. I want an audit, a hand audit. I want 100% actually. But, you know, you guys are not going to give it to me just like you did last time. But, you know, a lot of people, like I helped school board candidates run. We had four really good Amtrads, American traditionalists, not communists like those first two speakers. That's proof it's a fraudulent system already. Those crafted speeches, did you hear that? Oh, congratulations, you did everything perfectly. I'm proud of you. Blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's just like... Wow. Yeah, proof. That's proof right there. So these candidates spent all the money running for office. And look at this, who ran for school board. We have Colleen Westlake, that backstabbing traitor, and no one ran against her. Why? Because it's a waste of time and money because we know the outcome, especially on the school board and the primary, because they want our children. And I want our children back from these perverts. And the perverts on the library board, too. But, okay, I'm venting a little bit. I kind of would like you guys to do a hand audit. And what Mr. St. John suggested was excellent, and Mr. Williams said, we don't have confidence in this at all. And I'm going to be spreading the word to the people. A lot of people are just ignorant and don't care. And like the other speaker said, they know it's rigged, so they're not going to even participate. Is that the way you run a country? Is it going to be successful? Ask yourself that.

Thank you. Penny Brock, followed by Rob Lynn Williams.

Penny Brock, for the record, please put my comments in the record under this first public comment time. I not only was a voter, I talked to voters. I heard over and over again, especially as I told them about being an observer in the ballot processing room. And their conclusion was, that settles it. We didn't trust these elections, and we're not trusting this one, and we are not going to vote. Now, I know that Chair Andreola has her new election data transparency project because she's concerned about declining voter participation. Well, I have to tell you, what I saw in the observation booth almost makes me not want to vote anymore because I don't trust that our votes are being counted or accurately counted. I do not trust it, but you know what? I'll keep voting, and I'll keep observing, because it just gives me more stories to tell. So it's interesting that we had 321,109 registered voters. However, 322,219 mail ballots were sent out. Then they kept generating mail ballots for the online voters. So I don't know how many actual mail ballots they generated. How can there be more ballots than registered voters? Right there, that tells you this election should not be certified. Something is wrong. I got that number from the mail ballots out of the 6-8 report. At that time, there were 78,069 mail ballots that had been rejected for one reason or another. There were 47,149 mail ballots accepted to be counted. Another thing that happened, observing on election night, went home at 12.15 the next morning, and three of our observers were still there until they turned off the lights. We see things happening even though we don't have transparency. So Andrew McDonald did a press conference that night, and he talked about, let me see if I can find my notes. Well, I can't find my note on that. But in an interview last week, he was asked, how long does it take to process a mail ballot? And he said 10 to 12 hours. 10 to 12 hours. How does that happen? I call it musical chair mail ballots in the observation room.

Thank you. Roblyn Williams, followed by Veronica Cortez.

My name's Robbie Williams. I observed close to probably 40 hours in the observation room. The people that are speaking out about knowing how wonderful the vote went was never seen. Neither was any NGO. or non-government that you hired never came to observe. I had many questions concerning my issues that had to do with computers that go home, go in and out, and then come in and get plugged in to what should be sterile election equipment. I have a big problem with that. So did other counties.

I don't have internet.

So what I saw from an investigation and a Senate hearing with the registrar voter in Maricopa County, he was forced to admit that those laptops in Maricopa County that went home with their staff and back in had the ability to go in at least to signature verification at home. Why is that important? It is through signature verification that you can remove active voters. You can pause them. We paused a lot of voters. You can throw that back in. You can deny signature verification. You can approve signature verification. There is a lot of problems with our signature verification. These things are happening. We get answers that, oh, no, laptops can go home. No problem. If that was something that was decided in 2020 because of COVID, it is six years. You want transparency of our elections? You don't let them have their phones, their laptops in and out there constantly. They don't allow us to simply use our phone to take pictures, but they'll allow the press to sit there for five hours with an open line of communication on their laptop, on their phones. We witnessed two, I personally witnessed two workers in the room, one after being assured, assured by George Guthrie that these computers did not verbally, which is why I write things now, watched one go on Google page and watched one go on and look for job opportunities in Washoe County. You want to know why it takes so long to count the votes? They sit around. I have hundreds of pictures. I have video. I collect documentation. You guys don't ever ask. You don't want to hear it. You don't want to see it. Someday I'm hoping someone will collect it and it will be a federal audit. That's what I'm advocating for.

Thank you. Veronica Cortez, followed by Deborah Jalen.

Good morning, everybody. Veronica Cortez, for the record, everybody's favorite lunch lady. Yeah, lots of good stuff happening. I was here at the last meeting. I didn't bring any papers this time because I just wanted free speech. In case you didn't know, I am running for legislation, District 27. I'm really excited to work with the new District 3 person coming in. Sorry, I lose my verbiage because it's really hard to... use words for people that I have a lot of respect for. But since I've become a candidate, I've really been into looking into campaign donations and where is the money coming from? Because working for the school district for the last 26 years, the most I've ever made in one year was $37,000. And I don't know if you know, but you can't live off of that. But that's reality. I have a 10-year-old daughter. that I just had to remove out of Esther Bennett because of so much corruption in the schools in Sun Valley. It's so sad. With the students, with the staff, I wanted to work closer to my business because unfortunately I can't live off of a lunch lady's salary. So, you know, I opened my pizza place, I got my notary license, and just kind of focused on Sun Valley to make things better. But as I try to make things better, I find there's a lot of resistance from board members. There's a lot of hiding things, a lot of things that I was not expecting to see from my leaders. And I just want you to know that. A lot of people have lost faith, but I know you may be deep down inside are godly people. Andrea and I go to the same church. I play the flute. I never find her, though. There's like the audience of 1,000 people. She knows where I am. But I invite you to come down to Immaculate Conception, 7.30 AM. It's nice to get your church on, then go on with your day. And you get a free donut. And sometimes they sell turnovers. And it's just a really good atmosphere. So it's nice to know that a commissioner has a backing in God. And I hope the rest of you, too. And I hope we can get the change that the people want in the community, whether it's you as leaders again, whether it's not, whether it's me. Doing this whole campaigning thing, I'm coming into this knowing I'm not winning. I'm going up against a career politician that has all the Democratic money in the world. But I have God on my side, and everybody will be judged one day. I'm ready, and I hope you're ready too, Kate. Mariluz, Clara, Alexis, and Mike, I bless you on your journey. Thank you for your time, and I also want to advocate for Sun Valley. Remember, it's a super dangerous place, and we're working for Sun Valley to get it better, and I hope the next person that comes in, whether it's the same one or the next one, We can really work together as a community depending, not depending, but regardless of our party lines, we're a community. We need to stick together. I have a campaign kickoff party, which is going to be at Alfredo's Cafe on June 27th from 10 to 2. If you want to come by, we're going to have the Sun Valley History presentation. Hope to see you there. Have a great day.

Thank you. Deborah Jalen, followed by Janet Butcher.

Good morning. This is Debbie Jalen. And I was recording the other day. There must have been a glitch in your system because I wasn't recording the whole thing. So I'm going to start over. I'm going to try to go as fast as I can. Okay, these are my takeaways as an observer of this election. I've observed a couple of elections, but these are my takeaways. On election night, there were no high chairs in the lobby to view the tabulation room. The chairs aren't high enough in there that you can see. Into the tabulation room, we asked for them. We were denied... that we were denied that initially. The same night we asked for the lights to be turned on there twice, staff said no. We finally contacted Ryan Gustafson, which he did come through and provided that on both the higher chairs so we could see into the tabulation room and also the lights were turned on. However, they weren't on many other times when they were in the tabulation room. That evening, we were informed by George Guthrie at 725 that the intake would be taken out, to take place out in the parking area that's 50 to 60 feet away. There's no possible way you could even observe that. So we were told before it was always eight to 10 feet away. You could see it was fine and if there was something we could be able to point that out. They were only allowed two, is the screen on? We were only allowed to have three people stand here and look. As you can see, there's only room for three, 50 to 60 feet away. That's not a good observation at all, meaningful observation. And I asked Mr. Guthrie about it, and he said, oh, I told... He couldn't remember at first. I realize it was a tough night. But then he said, two of the people that I work with very well, and I asked them, they were both there. They said, absolutely, there was never advised of any kind of change at all. This was done apparently that night. Or if it was, it wasn't discussed with us. And then the lighting, as you can see, There's no lighting, there's absolutely no lighting. 50 to 60 feet away, what can you see? And there's simply not enough rooms in the processing room for us to do meaningful observation. It's really, it's wrong. We're talking about the 15,000 ballots not found. Well, what about the 150 that we found in just our one precinct that we covered? where Mike Clark was part of that, who lived in that precinct, we could vote he was in that area, our commissioner. Anyway, did those ballots go out? We don't know. Those records came from this office. So it's not, I hope you don't certify this election. It's not fair. In the, I've got 19 seconds. Outside of this room, there are three inlays in the flooring as you enter. Integrity, effective communication, and quality public service. None of which has been followed by this register of voters. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Janet Butcher, followed by George Eddie Lorton.

Janet Butcher, for the record, I left all my prepared notes at home. I was so excited to get here. Anyway, I do want to say I think I saw some familiar faces when I was observing, and it was nice because they were working hard. I also have people that were election workers and observers, although I don't think there were as many observers as there have been in the past out in the community. I did... go into what is called the observing room and the fishbowl, I guess they call it, when they were counting the votes and stuff. Efficiency-wise, being in IT for, I'm going to date myself, over 50 years, almost close to 60, that I saw some things that I go like, why? Why aren't we being a little bit more efficient about some things? I do thank Reggie for his answers to my questions. In fact, the last question was submitted on Monday. By Tuesday morning, I had my answer. I appreciated that. However, I do have more questions, so hopefully I can follow up the questions on the answers that he gave me because There are a few things we know you're going to rubber stamp this you guys have always done it in the past People come before you they give you documentation They show you what things are wrong, but you rubber stamp it. I don't know why I Don't know how you can do it with a straight face and be happy about it and We've got some problems. Why don't people vote? Why do we have a low turnout? It's obvious why we have a low turnout. Why bother? I'm like Penny, I'm one of those that I'm not going to quit voting. But there are a lot of people out there that just throw up their hands and say. Now, it's an interesting thing about the new way and the new ballots and stuff. Both of my neighbors had two different decisions on what the husband hated it and the wife liked it. So, I mean, you're going to have that no matter what. I just thought that the privacy sleeve was kind of funny because you take it out of the privacy sleeve and put it in that so anybody standing there can see it. And besides that, I don't care who knows who I vote for. But anyway, I don't think you should rubber stamp this again. Thank you. Thank you.

George Eddie Lorton.

For the record, my name is George Eddie Lorton, running for Reno Mayor. I ended up, there's a few things that occurred. Who'd ever expect that the governor in the pocket of developers and special interest groups would endorse someone in my little race? And we're only 380 votes out, too. So that's the terrible part about the good old boys. They want uncontrollable development, which I hope you look for in the future, in data centers. They don't care about our resources or infrastructure or anything. where I cared about the people. We put a lot of work into this. Running's hard, which all of you know. So, I would like to mention a couple things that occurred in my race alone, because that's when I was interested in, and there were inconsistencies. At first, they took forever to finally give the first tally on my race. And then they did a whole bunch of drops after that, and I was 600 votes out at the time. They did a whole bunch of drops after that. And my race was not, you know, brought up to speed. So they weren't... Every time they did a drop, they didn't bring it up to date. So then my attorney called. Then all of a sudden after that, we'd gain like 200 votes. And then from that point on, they would update it. They were supposed to send us reports. And halfway through, they kind of stopped that. And then finally, we got the full reports at the end. But the inconsistency is where I'm a forensics auditor and a business analyst. But what do I know? But all of a sudden, when you have 600 and some drops, two of them in a row, there's one vote difference between two of you and 600 ballots. That's mathematically impossible. So a lot of these things happen quite a few times. Then at the end, we had a drop the other night where I gained another 20 votes from 380 votes out. Votes mean something. Then I find out 1,000 votes don't get procured. So they're not going to use those votes. A thousand votes means a lot in my race, and it could go either way. So I'm not a sore loser. It could help the other side, too. But there's a thousand votes that aren't used, which isn't right. And then all of a sudden, I've been informed that 15,000 votes... was return to sender. So we don't have clean voter rolls. So we get 15,000 votes back, undeliverable, and I need a few hundred votes? That's unacceptable. And they're happy and jumping through hoops because last time it was 42,000 votes. So I think you really need to take a look at the system. They should end up stopping mail-in voting a week before the final vote, and then we don't have this. We're an embarrassment to the nation, kind of, to where... We're the very last ones to report on these national elections here because they keep counting and counting election week and a half. And they should, if they stop the mail-ins, it doesn't stop anyone from doing that, and then they'd have time to count and procure, which would help our system. Whichever system that may be, you have to be within the rules of the system. But now I want to point out Fallon and Churchill County just ended up doing a special election over a couple hundred votes that weren't delivered.

Thank you. We have nobody else signed in.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and close public comment at this time. We'll now move to commissioners and county manager announcements, reports, and updates. Manager Thomas.

Thank you. This includes board and commission updates, requests for future topics for future agendas. I just wanted to take a moment, if I might, to recognize the extraordinary work by the 18 staff that serve in the Registrar of Voters Office. I sat alongside you as well as many of the executive staff and employees of this organization working tirelessly to make sure that Everything was as smooth, as clean, as transparent as it could be. So I just want to recognize the work that you did. It was tremendous, and thank you. I also wanted to recognize the more than 400 people that we had helping us pull off this election with 50 vote centers on election night and all of the coordination and training and work that that takes. I just want you to hear that it didn't go unrecognized. So thank you so much to all of you.

Thank you. Anything else, Manager Thomas? Thank you. Commissioner Clark.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have questions and comments, and I'm concerned. I heard on Tuesday's meeting, I heard Doug Jalen talking about mailing out Postcards or some type of mail or in his personal neighborhood, and he relied on the register of voters offices. He probably bought this information or got it from the register of voters somehow or another. And out of the mailing that he did, he found 47% of the. recipients didn't receive the mail. So 47% is the number he quoted, and it may or may not be that number, but that's the number he quoted. So that made me think a little bit, so I reached out to Mr. Gustafson yesterday about our ballots here at the county. Two years ago, we had some 40,000-plus ballots that were returned undeliverable, In this particular election, we had over 15,000. I don't remember the exact number. I was driving when he told me that, and I didn't write it down, so maybe he'll share that with us if he gets an opportunity. Over 15,000 ballots that were undeliverable. Are these real people? Are these people dead? Do they don't reside there? Is the address wrong? How do over 15,000 ballots get returned? What does that cost the county? What does postage cost? What does printing cost? Then you look at the actual elections. How many elections? I guarantee the DA would probably like to have an extra 15,000 I guarantee some of the people running for mayor and other offices that are running. And so it's just very odd to me that we've had two years to clean up the rolls. And I don't know what an acceptable number is. You know, obviously not every single letter is going to get delivered, not every single ballot. But 15,000 seems like a lot. I'd also like to ask the registered voters, is there any way to get a list of those names or is that private? And if it is private, what about taking that list and comparing it with other methods of voting? Did those folks go up on election day and ask for a ballot there? So out of the 15,000, how many actually may have voted and do we have that number? Is that number available? of the folks that didn't receive a ballot in the mail for whatever reason, and then a study again, why didn't they receive a ballot in the mail? Is their name spelled incorrectly? Is the address wrong? It is a sweet number versus apartment. I'd just like some details. And I think that would go a long way to assure the folks, the citizens, the voters, the folks in the county of what's really taking place. But in my estimation, 15,000 is over 15,000 is not an acceptable number. I talked to the... yesterday the treasurer here in the county and asked him what would happen if 15,000 of your tax bills didn't get delivered. What would happen? Well, the state of Nevada would be right over here and closing down the treasurer's office. I asked the assessor the same exact question. What happened if you sent out 15,000 assessments and you didn't assess 15,000 properties? What would happen with that? you know the department of taxation would be over here like a lightning bolt shutting down those those two departments so again we've got so many uh other county offices that have accuracy uh foremost in their mind the recorder's office think about what if we had 15 000 people that own property here in the county and and somehow or another they're Their deeds weren't recorded for them. So this is these are questions that that need to be addressed. Why is it that certain departments in this county have a high degree of accuracy? And in this particular case, you know, I don't think it's there. And last time it was 47,000 ballots were returned and undeliverable, this time it's 15,000. And they're actually happy about that. I don't know what the acceptable level is, but I think there should be studies to find out what an acceptable level of failure to deliver is gonna be acceptable here. And we should be looking at that and figuring it out. This is almost the same thing we had two years ago. And then next I'd like to find out direct question to the Chair. What was your take on last election when we voted not to certify the election? What exactly was your experience after that thing that took place when we voted not to certify? And the next day or the same day, whenever it might have been, you decided to reconsider. So walk us through that so I'll have a better understanding of what the commissioner's role is. I remember we had Nate Edwards was our DA at the time, and he said we should vote our conscience. And we did. And the next thing I know... the Attorney General of the State of Nevada wants to sue us for voting our conscience. So maybe we can get Mr. Large to give us some comments. And also I'd like the Chair to answer the question that I had of what was her experience last time when we voted not to certify and then how our mind changed the next day.

Thank you. Commissioner Hill.

No comments, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Thank you. Vice Chair Garcia. Good morning. I just wanted to thank our staff for the incredible work and the heavy lift that they had. I know I gave you some acknowledgement on our Tuesday meeting, but I just specifically wanted to highlight this is a tough job as it is, and I've commended you all on all that hard work, but on top of the necessary day-to-day operations, you've continually worked rolled out successful new initiatives. And I think that's really a strong point of our team here at Washoe County is not only are they showing up to do the work, they're pushing the boundaries on how we can think outside the box and make the voter experience more accessible and more transparent. So for example, the paper ballot printing and scanning, it just seems like yesterday that you rolled that thing up into the caucus room and we were able to see it for the first time. And I said, wow, this is, pretty, a big change for our public. And I've heard a lot of positive comments about that. A public commenter earlier said it was more legible and easier to feel confident that the votes that they cast were accurately reflected. So that was a big change for us this year. The 40 plus ADA curbside voting locations, that was something that I was very pleased about and something that we all promoted with our constituents. And just knowing that people could have that peace of mind that they can do and participate in this process with ease and access, that goes a long way for our constituents. And last but not least, it hasn't happened yet, but we will be moving into our new facility. We've got some votes ahead of us coming up. with an anticipated move date of November, December of this year. So this general election will be the last time we will be seeing all this in our Building A, and I'm really looking forward to that. So I believe it's a very special time in Washoe County's registrar voter history, and I just thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you. I, too, want to not only thank the staff, but the leadership, and quite frankly, all of the volunteers. I mean, what was there, like several hundred volunteers that gave their time, and to all of the folks who were the observers, and everyone looking, and really all, in my opinion, everyone wants the same thing. Really, at the highest level, everyone wants the same thing. And I think that we are getting there. And I do think that it's a very special, special place for all of us. Casting a vote is what makes us Americans, and we need to be obviously assured that every vote counts. So that is the highest level that we all are. And so I am going to ask, if we could, while we're talking, would you be so kind? I think we've been kind, and I really truly believe in being respectful and having dignity, and I'm going to ask that we do that. So thank you for letting me finish. Thank you. I do appreciate also the fact that there's always going to be work that needs to be done. Always. There's legislative things that need to happen. There's a recent report that just literally came out about some things that can be considered by the legislature for mail-in ballots being opt-in. You know, there's various things that happen and our democracy actually and the founding fathers who put it together really created, in my opinion, built in tension. There's built in tension between the three branches. and at the highest level to be able to look at the Constitution and look at the Declaration of Independence and know that this is our 250th anniversary and this is the biggest gift we have is to be able to have a vote. And all the years that I voted and many of you have voted, those that have never voted and will be soon voting depending on their age, what a great gift that the Founding Fathers gave us. But the reality is is that everything evolves. Everything needs to be better. We'll see where the legislature takes things. We'll see where the leadership of the current governor actually takes us. But there are things that need to be done. And I commend the staff at the ROV for doing everything within their legal power to make everything as best it can. And so having said that, I can't imagine the pressure that you all have been put under because you are given, in my opinion, the highest responsibility of making sure that you do everything correctly. And you're legally bound by that. So thank you for your tireless work. And thank you, Manager Thomas, for your leadership as well. And for DA Large and all of the folks that are legally looking at everything, I appreciate that. But listen, I would be remiss wearing a cowboy hat and not talking about today's Reno Rodeo. Right? So if you don't know, today is the first day of the 107th year of the Reno Rodeo. And so those of you that do 1919, that's when it started, to today, there were a few years that it didn't happen. But the point is, it's the 107th year. So I just want to share, literally, if you can, there are so many great events. And talk about volunteers, close to a thousand volunteers that work tirelessly all year round to put on the wildest, richest rodeo in the West. So I hope that you can visit it. Those of you that have families or kids or yourself, there are lots of free events. This year's there's a PRCA, um, Reno rodeo youth event. So I think that's going to be really fun and it's free. And then that's on Saturday from 9am in the indoor arena. And then kids day is always special. It's father's day. What a great way to spend time with family and go and, um, enjoy Kids Day again on Sunday from 9.30 to 1.30, and then there's many, many other events that I'm going to stop. I do want to give special recognition to Dr. J.J. Gokachia, putting on and bringing back the Nevada State Fair. 136 years it actually went. Did you all know that? 136 years it went consecutively. And then it stopped for 16 years. And this is the first year it came back. Thank you to Caden Smetanovic, Washoe County, the governor, the legislature, because when they signed AB 333, it designated that land. Back to agriculture, which is what the deed originally said in the 1800s. So how cool that we're being able to bring back the Nevada State Fair. If you hadn't gone, it'll be here next year. But I hope to see you all at the Reno Rodeo and celebrate the wildest, richest, and celebrate our Western heritage. That's who we are as a country, right? Cowboys, cowgirls, God, faith, country, apple, apple pie. So having said that, if there aren't any other, I'm going to, yeah. There are? Yeah, I'm going to get to you in just one quick second. I also want to just, again, thank... In fact, all of the staff who I missed that actually helped with all hands on deck to help. I'm talking about Washoe County employees who helped the ROV as well. And I want to make sure everyone gets a shout out on that too. So it's not just the ROV, which obviously works very, very hard. I'm not suggesting that all the volunteers, but the staff and really some volunteers When you have volunteers, it's sometimes people don't show. So having everyone all hands on deck, thank you, Manager Thomas, for actually leading the charge and making sure everything was covered. So I just wanted to finish that piece, and I apologize, I forgot about that. Commissioner Herman, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sorry I'm unable to be there, but I'm having a hard time walking right now. I hurt my back. But I really wish I could have been there. I want to thank all the great public speakers and all that. And then I'm just going to read this from what I've written here. For all the years I've been a commissioner, every election has had None have gotten along without any problems. And that's almost 12 years. We seem to have problems with our elections. Our citizens have pleaded with the board to bring back transparency and honesty to our elections. And we as a board have not helped that situation. We really have kind of ignored them and made false promises to them. As commissioners, we do have the absolute power to make things right. But so far, we haven't considered the possibilities. Our dedicated patriotic constituents have requested for us to return to legal and acceptable elections at work and are fair and equitable and follow the law and run smoothly. They patiently suggested that we return to what worked back when we trusted our elections, when Americans proved their citizenship with picture IDs and elections were on election day, not election month, voting in precincts and counted in precincts So our hardworking election workers have brought our attention to the imperfections of dominion and other equipment. And we've answered them pretty defiantly by just continuing the purchase of millions of dollars of equipment at taxpayers expense that doesn't work. The citizens have spoken and our elections are broken. For years, they have patiently asked for no mail-in voting, no early voting, one-day elections, voter roll cleanup, or new registration. Maybe that would help us if we just had everybody send in a postcard that we send out or that they can pick up at the ROV. And let's clean up this registration. It's a mess. The roles are a mess. These brave citizens have tried. They've come to all the meetings after the elections. And they've tried to guide us and steer us in a better direction. But sadly, we ignore their wisdom. And the taxpayers are paying for our very poor judgment. I see no remorse from them. Every election seems to get worse with taxpayers carrying the load. Isn't it time we fixed the problem? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Commissioner Herman. Thank you. Commissioner Clark, I believe you're signed in again.

Yes, I had some questions and I didn't get an answer, but it's fine if you decide not to answer my question. But I still have a question for Mr. Large. About two years ago when DA at the time, Nate Edwards, said we should vote our conscience. Tell us the legal requirements of the canvas of the vote again so everybody's clear and it's on the record. That was then, this is now.

Thank you for doing that, Commissioner Clark, because I was going to ask him to do that when we close this item. So thank you so much for doing that for me. You could still ask him. I appreciate it. So do you want to do it now, sir? I will give that up to you. I'm happy to do it any time. In fairness to Commissioner Clark, he was way ahead. We were going to close this item and then ask you to do that. So please feel free. It's up to you.

We're here on behalf to do the statutory obligation, which is NRS 293.387, which is the canvas of returns. This board, the statute provides in relevant part that the board shall meet and canvas the returns. The canvas must be completed on or before the 10th day following the election. And in making the canvas, the board shall note separately any clerical errors discovered, take account of the changes resulting from the discovery so that results declared represent the true vote casts. So this is a mandate from the legislature in terms of the law that the board is required to meet by the 10th day after the election to certify the canvas, as you'll get the report from Mr. McDonald when he provides this report.

So the follow-up question would be, do we have to vote yes on the certification of the canvas of the vote?

My job is to tell you what the law is. Your job is to determine whether or not you agree with it or want to follow it. But my job is to tell you what the statutory obligations of this board are. Thank you.

Thank you. Anything else? All right, we'll go ahead and close that item and we'll move now to item five, the declaration of the canvas of the vote in order for the 2026 primary election held on June 9th, 2026 as required by NRS 293.387. Manager Thomas, thank you.

Thank you. To continue reading the item into the record, Canvas means a review of the election results by the Board of County Commissioners by which any errors within the election results are officially noted and the official election results are declared. The Canvas shall separately note any clerical errors discovered and take into account The changes resulting from the errors discovered and the results declared must represent the true vote cast. As soon as the Board declares the results, the Registrar of Voters shall certify the abstract of the results which must contain the number of votes cast for each candidate and enter it into the record of the Board. The Board shall then order the Registrar of Voters to transmit a copy of the certified abstract as well as a mechanized report to the abstract in accordance with the regulations adopted by the Secretary of State to the Secretary of State within the time required by NRS 293.387. We've got Registrar of Voters Andrew McDonald here today to provide a presentation for the board.

Thank you. Welcome, thank you. Do you have coffee in there, I hope?

Water today.

Water today.

Good morning, Chairwoman Andriola and Vice Chair Garcia and commissioners, county commissioners. I'm Andrew McDonald, the Washoe County Register of Voters for the record. Today we are here to canvass the vote for the 2026 June primary election. I have a small presentation I'd like to give prior to the certification. But before I begin, I'd like to give some thanks. First and foremost, I want to thank the voters who showed up in this election. While I wish there was more voters who turned out, the ones that did, I appreciate you coming and taking the time to cast your vote as your vote is your voice. Second, I want to thank my hardworking, dedicated staff of 17. You are the glue that holds the election together. If you're in the audience, please stand up so we can give you a round of applause.

Thank you.

Third, I want to thank the 189 county workers that signed up for 867 shifts who put aside their daily work duties to come down and work several shifts during the day and evening shifts for the election. I recognize that wouldn't be possible unless I thank their direct line managers and department heads to allow that to happen. To the 435 election workers who worked the two weeks of early voting and election day, thank you. This election cannot happen without you. The in-person voting is almost 100% done by the public. They are effectively the face of ROV. We rely heavily upon you to have a safe, secure, and transparent election. The sheriff's office, who escorted us daily to the post office from the USPS to ensure mail ballots were always protected during pickups, also providing security and coordination on election night. To the Secretary of State's office, thank you for your continued support. You actually are always there to pick up the phone if we have any questions about elections or election administration. To the Office of the County Manager and the executive team who came out periodically to assist during the election, thank you. Your support and trust in me to provide new and innovative ways of election administration is appreciated. County Commissioners, who have provided my office the ability to procure new voting equipment, so all in-person voters could cast a tangible ballot, full-length ballot, and offer support in ways to ensure that we could fund poll workers and equipment and things that we needed to get through the election. Even Commissioner Andreola, Chairwoman, thank you for your ability to negotiate the Reno-Sparks Convention Center lease for free.

I appreciate that.

Lastly, without vote center locations, we cannot have in-person voting. I want to thank the Washoe County School District for providing 27 schools, county libraries providing six locations, community centers, churches, and several private facilities that allow voting to happen at zero cost. Commissioner Hill, we are actively still working on creating a Patriot Award for our vote center partners. We haven't forgotten about that. And with that, I'd like to get into the presentation of the Canvas of the Vote. So what's new and what's happened since the last time we were up here? Well, we have the first ever ADA curbside voting program in the state of Nevada. As mentioned earlier, it got reused 40 times. While that number seems low, it's the first time we rolled this program out and I'm extremely excited about that. And I think in November and moving forward, it's just gonna get larger and larger. It helps to know for voters that they don't have to travel through the path into the vote center. They're not going to fall. They're not going to hit a crack with their crutch. They're not going to be able to get into the vote center because they're in a wheelchair. They can vote in the comfort of their car as soon as we check them in and validate that they are a validly cast voter. Ballot marking devices, that's new. A full-length ballot, tangible ballot at each vote center. We had a super center at the Reno Sparks Convention Center. We actually came up with election worker lapel pin, which one I'm wearing here, for rewards and recognitions to the staff that actually worked the election or any of our community partners. We revamped the I voted sticker this time around, almost a 2.0, highlighting the lands of Washoe County, the Truckee River, pine trees, Mount Rose, an American flag, very patriotic. The new mail ballot envelope design showing red, white, and blue, again, for patriotism. It used to just be a pink strip, so everyone who got a mail ballot, you'll see that new design. We rolled out automatic signature verification for more efficiencies in the mail ballot processing room. Intake of the vote centers and supplies in the garage for parallel processing of operations, not only from mail ballot processing, but vote center intake, so we're able to do both at one time. Observer's form, we actually asked observers to fill out a form for any questions so we could answer them publicly and everybody could go online and see all those questions and answers so that nobody could say that we didn't answer their question anymore. It's all out there. And speaking about public observation, observation was available for 34 days straight. Over the course of this time, our office received nearly 90 submissions, totaling 320 questions. One individual is responsible for 33% of those submissions, and three individuals are responsible for the rest of the 75% of the submissions. Turnout. The 2026 primary had roughly a 30.8% turnout. If you break that into 100%, 37% of that voted in person and 63% voted by mail. 321,409 registered voters. The early voting count was 18,781. Election day, 17,111. Total mail, 62,399. Provisional ballots validly cast, 535. The Democrat turnout was 39,606. Republican, 43,170. Nonpartisan, minor party, 16,050 votes. The next slide shows the historical volume of voters based on turnout method, so in person versus mail. And you can kind of see that there is a little trickle of up in mail. It's not extreme, but people are Using mail balloting and with mail balloting comes unfortunately some delays You know personally my personal opinion is I love when people go vote in person because you do get to Have that result come out on election night But it we follow the legislature and what they tell us and what they tell us is mail ballots go out universally to all voters Right. So that's what we do. That's in the law The next slide shows the turnout percentage. So in 2026, the election we just had, again, 30.8. The 2024 primary, it was the presidential primaries, 25%. The PPP, 24%. The 2002 primary, 31%. The 2020 primary, 33%. It's all in the line with what we just went through with this election and the turnout. Next, in regards to vote centers, We had 50 election day vote centers this time around and 22 early voting locations. Each vote center had a mail ballot drop box at all vote centers. There were three standalone drop boxes for early voting and two on election day. All locations had curbside voting. Didn't matter if it was election day or early voting, we had it everywhere. The top five drop box locations were Washoe County Complex with 2,792 drops, South Valley's Library with 2,726 drops, Spanish Springs Library with 1,867 drops, the ROV Office, 1,277 drops, and North Valley's Library at 1,134 mail ballot drops. Regarding mail ballots, 323,000 mail ballots were sent out. If you recall, I asked the board to approve moving to the state mail ballot print contract. That actually saved us quite a bit of money, but not only that, when mail ballots do come back undeliverable, we don't pay for that. Yes, the state taxpayers overall pay for it, but Washoe County out of our specific budget does not pay for those undeliverable ballots. So Commissioner Clark, to answer your quick question in regards to, it was about $3.50 in the prior year. So if you add $3.50 to the undeliverable ballots of 15,000, you get roughly, I think it's 50 something thousand dollars that we have cost avoided. Back to the presentation. 80,000 mail ballots did get returned to us. 71% of that by the United States Postal Service and 28% we picked up ourselves. We effectively became the United States Postal Service of the ROV. 1% delivered by the EASE program. 1,600 mail ballot, 615 mail ballots initially were rejected. And again, those are for signature mismatches, two ballots in an envelope. So husband and wife, maybe they lost an envelope. They put both their ballots in there. We can't count either of them because we don't know whose ballot it was. So that's by law. If someone signs their ballot, we cannot count that ballot. It is specific to that also. So identifying marks, we have to reject those. But anybody who cured, so again, that was the initial rejection rate, but as people cured, that rate fell down and actually increased the cure rate. Our cure rate was about 58%. We called every single voter, every single voter that needed a cure, our office called. The 323,000 number is not unique to voters. What do I mean by that? I heard somebody say earlier that we had 321,409 active registered voters, and they're right. The 323,000 is the total number of ballots sent out. However, if anyone updates their party, Another ballot is sent out to them. If the residents move, we send another ballot out. So there's going to be more ballots than there are voters, and there's a reason for that. And a ballot automatically gets sent out. So if I move my party from one to another, I'm going to get a second ballot. So that's the discrepancy between those two. Our office created a comprehensive cure report available daily on the ROV website to assist voters and interested parties in identifying and creating and contacting voters with signature cures. Another thing is intake. On election night, vote centers' ballot supplies were scaled and extended out into the parking garage to allow for parallel processing of vote center materials in conjunction with mail ballot processing. There was, again, an observer that said we let them know last minute. I didn't know I needed to let everybody know that that had to happen. However, when observers did come, we held all the cars. They came out, and they were able to see the entire process, maybe not to the in the last inch of the building, but they were able to see the entire process where they've never been able to see intake in the garage. And guess what? We do intake in the garage every election. So we opened it up to observers to be able to see that. Going back to cures, there were five ways to cures. You could cure in person, text to cure over the phone, in code and or by mail. regarding under-liberal ballots, 15,000 under-liberal ballots were returned. These were not voted ballots, they were returned non-voted ballots. That's a 4.6% return rate. So Commissioner Clark had asked earlier, what's the average? Well, the national average is between three and 5%. So we're right in line with that. Now, is it higher than I want it to be? Absolutely. However, we did all the list maintenance that we were allowed to do up until the election. Again, 90 days before an election, we can no longer do bulk list maintenance. It's now on the owners of the voter to tell us they've moved, they've canceled, they've passed away, et cetera. So what is an undeliverable ballot? Well, the United States Postal Service determined that the ballot can't be delivered to that specific voter name, whatever, address on file. And we cannot forward those ballots. That is the difference, Commissioner Clark, in regards to your question, in regards to the treasurer and the assessor. Mail can get forwarded on to the owner. But here, we cannot forward that mail ballot on to the original owner, the voter, because they no longer live there, and that is by law, so it comes back to us. So again, national statistic, about eight to 15% of voters change their address in a typical year. In a fast-growing rental economy like such as ours in Washoe County, we're actually below that average. Renters move far often more than homeowners in Sparks and Reno. We have a large rental population in those areas, especially near work centers and universities. Student population is also transitory with in and out of registrations. In the 2024 general election, 332,592 ballots were sent out, 22,366 returned undeliverable for a rate of 6.7. So we are 2% lower than we were in the general election. A reminder, there is a specific process for inactivating a voter and removing them off the voter rolls per NRS 293530. Our office must receive an indication that the voter has moved to initiate the inactivation process. It is the responsibility of the voter to update the registration accordingly. It is a two-way street. Reasons to send an address confirmation card. Just going a little bit deeper here. If we are notified by ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, which 27 states are a part of, we will send an address confirmation card to those voters. Our office receives correspondence another way is our office receives correspondence sent back that the voter had something that we sent to them and it came back undeliverable. Due to voter inactivity, we'll send an address confirmation card and due to undeliverable ballots. So the process is actually working. So if an undeliverable vote comes to us, we're going to start the 90-day inactivation process. So all of these voters, unless they update, will get an address confirmation card and be sent that card. And if a card comes back to us, we will inactivate all of those 15,000 voters, minus 1,100, and I'll mention that in a second. So I also want to just keep on hitting on this. In 2025, we did a massive amount of list maintenance. 75,721 voters were inactivated or canceled off the rolls. In fact, we inactivated 55,501 voters in 2025 leading up to before this election, the 90-day blackout. We also canceled 25,012 voters again up until March 11th. Washoe County, ourself, was responsible for one third of the state list maintenance activities since the general election. One third, our county alone. It's worth noting that out of the 15,000 undeliverables, 1,100 voters updated their address and voted in this election. I think that was another question Commissioner Clark you had asked. Lastly, when we joined the state ballot print contract, our county specifically does not pay for undeliverables as it did in the past, as I mentioned earlier. This would have been roughly $52,500 of a cost avoidance now. So why are there so many undeliverables? Because these 15,000 voters never gave us a reason to inactivate them because when we did sweeping list maintenance, they did not meet the merit of inactivation at that time. So again, now they're undeliverable, we will send out the card to make them inactive if they don't respond back. Okay, I think I've hammered that pretty hard. Post-election processing. So there were 13,652 mail ballots returned on election day, which is 20% of all mail ballots returned specifically on election day. 4,657 delivered by the United States Postal Service and 8,944 delivered by drop boxes. I, every time I could, I would hammer home, please drop in our drop boxes, especially as it got closer into election day. Because of the RTO situation, the regional transportation optimization at the post office, THERE ARE PARTNERS, BUT AS IT GETS CLOSER, I WOULDN'T TRUST PUTTING MY, DROPPING MY BALLOT ON ELECTION DAY AT THE POST OFFICE. I WANT TO DROP IT AT THE REGISTERED VOTERS OFFICE OR A DROP BOX TO ENSURE THAT IT GETS BACK. I THINK THAT VOTERS HEARD THAT MESSAGE LOUD AND CLEAR. AND THIS SLIDE SHOWS THAT. 808 BALLOTS RECEIVED AFTER ELECTION DAY AND ACCEPTED POSTMARKED BY ELECTION DAY AND ONE PERSON OF ALL ACCEPTED MALE BALLOTS. So 1,837 ballots received after election day and were rejected with no postmark by election day or receiving the fourth day after. Testing and audits. So we do testing and audits. Logic and accuracy. We do pre-lat. We do two rounds of pre-lat. We do one round of post-lat. We do that not only here, but at our new Longley warehouse where we did pre-lat and post-lat as of yesterday. Vote center equipment tested two weeks prior to election day to make sure that all equipment is functioning and working as it should. Central County Place tabulation tested two weeks before and the day before Election Day. So we tested even the day before Election Day. The Central County Place tabulation tested the day before Election Day. Central County Place tabulation tested a final time after Election Day. And we certify that with three people, a Washoe County employee, Reno City of Sparks, and City of Reno employee as part of the certification board. And in your packet, you will see those names and that they've signed off on those certifications. We also implemented ASP, or Automatic Signature Verification, this last election. And that also makes, we have to have an audit. Well, they asked for 1% audit. We did 100% more and we did a 2% audit. Maybe in the future we even do more. But the fact is, is we did more than what's even being asked of us. Staff audited 374 automatic signature verifications. The signature verification program was very successful. Almost 20,000 signatures passed through. And remember, when I came here, I asked if you could approve a 72 confidence level, which is a very conservative level. Southern California, many counties go 45 confidence level, where it's 72. And those 19,432 signatures passed through without having eyes on glass. Instead of having two people continue to look at 20,000 we would have finished even later if we had to have this bottleneck So it actually the money worked and it paid off for us Upcoming audit so there's a risk-limiting audit after we certify the election It's a post election tabulation audit a random sample of ballots to confirm originally reported outcome is correct So there's that I would like to just get into the discrepancies of the election. We did have some errors. Elections, as much as people wanted to be scientific, 100% bulletproof and perfect, we are human. There are a few things that happen, right? We train people for six hours and expect them to go off into the world and say, here you go, good luck, right? But We're available. We have a hotline, so we have eight people waiting on the phone to assist managers and assistant managers who call in and say, I have an issue with this voter. I have an issue with this equipment. I have, you know, what can I do to help? You know, something's down, et cetera. So all that being said, I'm going to spend some time reading, and I apologize I'm reading this, but I want it to be heard into the public, too. So discrepancies for early voting, in-person voting. There were three locations. that began early voting with training mode on a few poll pads. What does that mean? Those are the check-in stations at the vote centers. And unfortunately, we were still in training mode when we did pre-lab. They were left in training mode. This caused 17 check-ins to be done under a training mode, not election mode. This created fewer check-ins than ballots cast at the following locations, Sun Valley Neighborhood Center, South Valley's Library, and Spanish Springs, for a total of 17. Exiting training mode resets the database. Therefore, those 17 voters were able to vote and were not disenfranchised, but unfortunately they did not receive voter credit in their registration record for showing up. Again, these 17 people were able to vote. Just to make it very loud and clear, but I'm noting the discrepancy that there were check-ins to total ballot scan were not exact. Okay? Furthermore, Poll Pad 124 assigned to Washoe County Complex was pulled out of service because it did not sync with our voter registration election management system, VRIMS. This caused a temporary disruption of voter credit assignment for 63 voters between May 28th and June 1st. We corrected this issue by pulling the logs from the Poll Pad and manually assigning voter credit to these 63 voters. So was it an issue? Yes, we found it, we corrected it, and we manually updated so those voters would have voter credit. There was also a deviation of the Reno public market, where a voter pulled their ballot out of the printer before it fully printed, because it's duplexing both sides, causing a paper jam in the printer. The voter cast their partial ballot and left. When the printer jam was cleared, the printer automatically printed a second ballot. That's just the way it works. Thinking that a voter would have left without casting their ballot, the election board member then found that ballot sitting on that printer and went and cast it on behalf of the voter. This occurred twice at early voting before we were able to intervene.

Mr. McDowell, give us one moment, please. We bless Commissioner Harvey. We want to be sure she's here. Thank you. Commissioner Herman, can you hear us? I can hear you. Thank you.

Thank you. This occurred twice during early voting period before we were able to intervene. As such, this caused two additional ballots to be cast at that location, Reno Public Market, two additional ballots. We caught this after the fact and communicated to all vote centers that all misprinted ballots, regardless of how valid they seem, must be spoiled to ensure a clean process. That's early voting. Now move forward to election day. There were fled voters on election day, meaning a voter was checked in to vote, but left prior to casting their ballot. This occurred four times at the following locations, Grace Warner Elementary, Merce Hertz Middle School, Sparks Library, and Spanish Springs High School. So four times that happened. At Spanish Springs High School, we had an issue where every voter was incorrectly checked in with accessibility mode. So accessibility mode is a different type of mode for folks who need those features where maybe you're blind and you need to have a headset on to listen in and cast your vote through the tactile interface. This caused some voter confusion. So as we're checking folks in, the board there, they can either select a normal mode or accessibility mode, and they just kept on hitting accessibility mode. So unless you tap the screen twice, it's not going to give a vote for somebody, right? So it led to voter confusion and one voter leaving without voting at that location. There were also discrepancies on Election Day where a location had one more ballot scanned and voters checked in. This is a repeat of what I mentioned earlier that occurred at Reno Public Market during early voting. We again communicated to all locations that fled voter ballots must not be scanned in on behalf of the voter. This caused four additional ballots to be cast at the following locations. Jerry Whitehead, Hug High School, Sun Valley Neighborhood Center, and Washoe County Complex. Four ballots. Now we'll move on to discrepancies in mail ballots. On June 17th, yesterday, we audited the ballots and rejected status. So we already audited them, but we re-audited them. We found 15 validly cast mail ballots that should have been included on the count on Tuesday, June 16th. These ballots were subsequently added to the election results uploaded on June 17th with approval from the Secretary of State's office. Inclusion. When looking at the closest race separated by 36 votes, these six, the two plus the four I mentioned, these six discrepancies of additional ballots cast did not affect the outcome of the election results. That said, the votes cast represent the true votes cast minus the noted discrepancies I just mentioned. With that, I'd like to ask if there are any questions about the presentation or the election overall.

Thank you so much. I just really want to extend again how your level of mediocrity doesn't exist. It doesn't. And your expectation of the staff that works at the ROV, yourself as a leader, really has been increased in terms of having the best you can possibly be, right? And it shows. the amount of care that you've given and your commitment to following the law whether we have a discussion after or during or any time with individuals or constituents or even the folks in this room. We all have an opinion about something. But whether we like the law or not, we have to follow the law. And that is what you've done. Today, just as a reminder, today is about... The responsibility of the ROV, statutorily, to provide this board with making an official record of any errors which you just went over, any errors discovered, and accounting for those errors which you just went over. And if any, declare the results representing the true votes cast. So I just want to remind everyone that a lot of the information that has been shared is important. And I hope that you have been providing the information to not only the ROV or the Secretary of State's office or whomever is the right body, your elected officials, whoever they are, whoever they will be, to actually look at some of the things that need to be changed. But today, statutorily, we are required to have the ROV do the disclosure, This is full transparency. All of this information has been compiled. All of the information has been filed accordingly in terms of providing it not only to the public but to the board. So we are not, just for myself speaking, I am not saying that there isn't something that can be done better or something that can be improved upon. But today is not actually investigating. Today is not the responsibility of this body. Today is a ministerial function, statutorily required by each of us as a responsibility of our position to, again, to have the ROV make an official record of any errors discovered and accounting for those errors, if any, and declaring the results representing the true votes cast. So, I just feel like your point of various things that you shared are important, and I feel it's important for me to reiterate what DA Large actually eloquently shared as well. But I am going to open it up for comments. And I guess what I'll say, or questions, I guess what I would say is this. Thank you so much, again, to you, the leadership. It'll be interesting to see as we move to the warehouse. And I know... that I have made some recommendations when we go to the warehouse for additional observation opportunities for clarity and transparency. I hope there's an opportunity as well to have the public be a part of that dialogue when the time is right for that. I do think it's important that, and thank you for the mock election. opening it up to everyone to test the machines, test everything and see how it works. And then I am not going to muddle anything today, but it would be nice to have you come back and talk about Project Clean Sight and how that worked when the election, when we get through things. I would really appreciate it so we can understand how the Center for Internet Security and those protocols are going to continue to set the standard for assurance and being budget-friendly, but really proven global standards that can give everyone and build trust. So that's for another discussion. So I'll open it up to questions or comments. Commissioner Hill.

Great presentation, and I think this... You're really getting good at this. This is probably one of the best, I think, to really describe the discrepancies and why they happened and how they were corrected and what couldn't be corrected and whether it made a difference. Very clear. Thank you so much. Great work there. And I just want to remind the public and our board that this board, after the 2022 election, when we heard that there was opportunities for us to improve, our communication to our constituents, to improve the way we were reported out to the community, our election results, to improve the way we processed our elections. We did an audit. We doubled the staff in the ROV's office. We committed general funds that were not given to us by the legislature, but we were so committed to making sure that we did this right. In addition to that, as you heard from board members, and also from the Registrar of Voters, we are going to have a giant warehouse where we will be processing ballots even faster for our community and have a better opportunity for community members to also observe properly. And I know that this team worked tirelessly to ensure that we had more opportunities for people to vote in person and we used GIS data to make sure that we could do that and I do applaud the efforts of making sure that there were just many more locations. I will tell you I went to take my parents to vote in the downtown library and it was an incredible experience. My mother is disabled and the way that the team treated my mom with so much care and I know they did that for the entire community and ensuring that she had access to voting and she had a great experience and then I was able to vote on the day of the election at an elementary school close to my home and that was a great experience as well. You trained your team so well and Just customer service is always on the forefront and making sure that people feel good when they vote and that people are there to help them and make it official was really well done. And so I just wanted to commend you and the team and on another great election, we'll always continue to improve. um i you commissioner garcia said it really well that you're always trying to make sure that uh we're on the cutting edge of accessibility to voting and that's the number one um thing that we want to make sure that we we ensure that people have accessibility and that we also are transparent in the way that we report out and that we the way we communicate with people throughout the election so bravo and um i'm I'm very excited to make a motion to certify this election when it is time. Thank you.

Not yet. Thank you. Mr. Clerk.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the report. I think you did a great job. Your staff has been wonderful to deal with, good customer service throughout the whole election process and the election, so hats off to them. I don't think you hammered it too hard. I think you made the point, though, that everybody needs to understand that at the end of the day, these are not forwardable, these ballots. And I think that will go a long ways to make people feel comfortable with the numbers that you shared with us. So thank you. And it's also good to know that the county didn't have to pay for that return postage. Good work. Thank you. Good job. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Vice Chair Garcia.

Thank you so much. Wow, today was exciting for me. I think after us making it a strategic priority at the county to really invest in the ROV, It's really paying off, and this is one of the best presentations I've seen come out of the ROV's office. I've seen three different ROVs, and this culmination of work is really just, it shined today. Your presentation, I was listening intently to the public commenter's questions, fears, and concerns. I really appreciate the fact that you weaved in and answered a lot of those questions today. I know I'm probably not the only one at the dais that actually learned something new today, the undeliverable or not being able to forward those. I did not know that until today. So thank you for keeping us surprised of all those nuances that we aren't always privy to or from the outside looking in. WE JUST AUTOMATICALLY QUESTION OR DOUBT. SO GREAT PRESENTATION. FOR THE DISCREPANCIES, AGAIN, I DON'T THINK WE'VE EVER SEEN IT PRINTED OUT AND LAID OUT IN THIS FASHION. SO I COMMEND YOU FOR THAT. THAT'S GREAT COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPARENCY. HOW, MY QUESTION TO YOU IS, FOR THOSE OF YOU IN THE CROWD THAT DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THIS SITTING IN FRONT OF YOU, HOW CAN THEY REACH OUT, GET A COPY OF THIS, OR MAYBE IT'S IN OUR AGENDA PACKET.

IS IT IN THE AGENDA PACKET? I DON'T KNOW.

IS THIS POSTED?

It will be.

I'm hearing it will be.

Yeah. We can put it on our website. It needs to be. Whatever.

Okay. Well, and I just think that we welcome people to, again, look at this, ask the questions. And for you, Mr. McDonald, what's the best way for people to ask those specific questions about the discrepancies?

Yeah, they can email us directly or call our office, and we will be able to respond back that way. It's just the best way to get answers back.

All right.

Thank you.

Well done.

Thank you very much.

Commissioner Herman. Are you there, Commissioner Herman?

Okay, there I am. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think I said pretty much everything that I needed to say. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I just have a quick question, just as a follow-up. Thank you again for putting in the opportunity for people to submit their questions and be able to have that public, and that is public. So as people can access that information, they may have that same question, and so I I'm also wondering how long, will that just stay up, those questions, or what's the plan for that?

Yeah, I mean, I can work with our PIO to figure out the length. I'm thinking 30, 60 days. But as we get right back into the next election that's coming, we will be taking off any ability to ask specific questions about that election because now we, hopefully, we certify this election and move on. But those questions will remain out there. I'll commit to 60 days.

Okay, I appreciate it, and I think it might be helpful because you might get questions, and you were very generous in saying, look, go ahead and continue to ask questions if you like, and so thank you for that follow-up. You're welcome. Yeah, appreciate it. All right, we're going to go ahead. If no one has any other questions, we'll move to public comment, please.

Real quick, Madam Chair, I just want to clarify that those supplemental documents were posted this morning about 8.15. We did have about 25 copies in the back for people that wanted to access that document, so it's live.

Thank you. Great. Thank you. So we'll call for public comment at this time, please.

First up is Tammy Holt-Still, followed by Nicholas St. John.

Hello, Tammy Holt still for the record. I'd like to thank you for the detailed, it answered a lot of the 15,000. I still have my issues that 15,000 people did not get their ballot, 15,000 people that I may have paid for in District 5 that I paid to get that mailing list and it's incorrect mailing list, so I mailed out a card as a candidate Those are issues. Those are big issues. That's a lot of money to be sending out cards when we don't have correct addresses from you, when we pay you for the correct addresses. Sorry. And when it comes to, again, disenfranchising everyone, you started this election off by disenfranchising everyone. half of Washoe County's District 5. Because of the rural, they could not get their primary ballot for their section because of the internet or having the availability to understand the internet to get their ballot. Then the ballot didn't even match what the true ballot really was. inconsistencies like this causes problems and makes people think you're confusing them on purpose and they don't want to deal with it. This has got to change. You got to get back to simple, give them their true sample ballot so that they know what they need to look at before their true ballot comes. How are they going to do their research when they get a booklet that shows all these elections and they're not being able to vote for them, but they don't know that, so they're doing all this research. You have to do it right from the beginning. One wrong step at the very beginning throws everything else off. You've got to do it right. As a candidate who put a lot of money into my campaign, knowing how this sample ballot came out, knowing how it disenfranchises a lot of elderly and a lot of other people that can't afford to get to the internet or don't have the equipment, don't understand it, this was wrong, 100%. And not to have a response from a chair when she's been asked about it was very frustrating too. Thank you.

Nicholas St. John, followed by Diana Hoffman.

For the record, Nicholas St. John again. And while I address this, and these are actual real numbers, Andrew, this has been turned in through 311, so somewhere along the lines, I hope that the ROV actually answers this. The question is, why are votes changing at all from early voting after the close of early voting? So it should be able to be done within a few hours. Again, it's all electronic. You stick chips into tabulators and they do the count. And yet we see 230 ballots from early voting from third party that were then, it looks like, moved into Republican and Democrat parties. Does that not bother you? None of you addressed this as even something that you should even be concerned about. Why is not the whole world concerned about ballots that start out in a third party that get redistributed to a Republican and Democrat? And it didn't happen just once, it happened twice. Over 300 ballots. Just so you understand the numbers of that, that's over 15%, and we're talking about 4.6% getting returned as an acceptable number. number of ballots being returned, and yet we have 15% of the ballots that were turned in that were paper, and you guys can stop this right now and have him bring those ballots down here and count them in front of God and everybody and tell us whether it's 1,929 ballots that were turned in or 1,625 according to the numbers that have been obtained from the Secretary of State. Question is, will you? Now, you have all day to do this. We have a question. This is something that could easily be proven by taking ballots and counting them in front of God and everyone and telling us whether you have 1,929 ballots that were turned in in early voting or 1,625. Which is it? That's a 15% error. Who would think 15% error in a voting system would be acceptable? So you guys didn't answer me. You had a chance during your talk during item four. And then you just had a chance now after his presentation, which, by the way, was great. But it didn't address this. And someone needs to answer this. Why are 15% of the ballots that were turned in by paper through a scanner later on a week later? then readdressed and sent into the Republican, Democrat. They're very different ballots. Could that make a difference in our race? I think that it probably could. Some of them were within that 300-vote margin. So anyway, obviously I'm a little disappointed that no one managed to address that, and I'd like to see you guys address it now.

Thank you. Diana Hoffman, followed by Lynn Gillespie.

Madam Chair and distinguished commissioners, I'm short. And Mr. Large, Attorney Large, I've been an attorney since 1975. I've been advisor to two presidents of the United States. I'm currently president of a nonprofit here in Washoe County. Sir, there has been enough errors, and I'm going to incorporate the statement since I have only two and a half minutes of your other speakers, particularly Commissioners Herman and Clark, Mr. Oscar Williams, and Mr. St. John. This is a review. Canvas is a review. It is not, excuse me, Madam Chair, strictly ministerial. And I think that it's extremely important that you take these errors very seriously and that the statements have been incorporated as contests and errors. And that before you certify this election, and I believe there's someone else who's going to discuss how just 100 discrepancies in Churchill County caused for a recount. So this is a lot more than 100. We want our citizens to vote, and they will be disenfranchised when they are not voting because of lack of faith at this election. And Articles 1, Section 2 and 4 of the Constitution, the 15th Amendment and the 26th Amendment are relevant, Mr. Large. So I would greatly appreciate that you do not certify today and that you actually take some of the advice with respect to recounting. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Have a great day.

Thank you.

Lynn Gillespie followed by Jennifer Willett.

Thank you. Lynn Gillespie. I just have three questions and I apologize. You might have answered them and I didn't get it. So I'm going to go ahead and ask again. How many people were counting votes? Because we heard, and I believe, not sure which channel, but I heard this on the news, that the voting was slow to come in and there was a mistake made because there weren't enough people working, counting votes. which leads me to my next question as far as ballots needing curing. Were there handwriting experts checking these signatures? I think Robbie kind of answered that question earlier in the day. She said that people were taking home computers and checking signatures at home and coming back. So that's really, I don't know, it just doesn't sound right. So in throwing out 1,000 ballots because of them not being responded to for curing, that's a lot of votes. Then another question that just came up was how many ballots were counted that didn't have postmarks from the post office? That's it.

Thanks. Jennifer Willett, followed by Cliff Nellis.

Good morning, my name is Jennifer Willett and I'm the senior campaign manager of All Voting is Local Action Nevada, an organization that advocates for policies and legislative priorities that expand voter access. We support the certification of the 2026 primary. I live in Washoe County, and throughout the election, I also volunteered as a poll monitor, and as a voter myself, I voted at the downtown library. I not only participated in the election, but had a front row seat to witness how effectively it was conducted. The system worked due to the wonderful staff at the registrar's office and the election workers, and the election was extremely smooth with almost 100,000 votes cast. It's now your responsibility to complete the election by certifying the results. Certification, as we've heard, is a mandatory duty. County commissioners cannot override the will of the people by refusing to certify an election. So please protect our votes and ensure that the will of people prevails by certifying the results. Thank you. Thank you.

Cliff Nellis, followed by Ryan Fortish.

Cliff Nellis, for the record. The word canvas isn't a fabric they used to use on tents. It has an extra S on the end. You know what that means? It means to scrutinize, to look over very carefully. You know, when elections were simple and real, we had people at the precinct level. I did the caucus in 2024 for the Republican Party at Pleasant Valley. I supervise it. And I was one sitting there. We're counting. And it's opposite sides of the table, two people counting. Anybody could look and observe without being stuck in a little booth in a corner. That's real observation. If we could just walk around the whole room, we can't do that. That was a new development about four years ago. But I challenge this. I don't think there's a way you can scrutinize it. Because when we had real people looking at the numbers and counting, all you had to do is like, okay, yeah, your numbers, yeah, we're looking over, yeah, okay, make sure we do the addition correctly between each precinct. I challenge that there's people that have some access to these computers, guys. Anyone who votes on a computer is an absolute fool. A computer, how do you know what goes in and what comes out the other end? You can't. You don't have eyewitnesses. This thing's a whole joke. I challenge you guys. I declare somebody got their fingers in there and changed some of the votes. Now, I think these guys did a great job. I think they're honest people. But that's part of the fraud. It's part of the thing. You gotta have good people doing, making it all look real, genuine. And it's not. There's people that got their fingers in it somehow because these computers are hackable. And what Mr. St. John is asking is real simple. You guys can postpone this and just show us people that maybe you care about validity. We heard all this crap last time. And Mr. Hicks, we got rid of him. Because he was one of the ones accusing Mr. Clark and Mrs. Herman. And you also, Ms. Sandrell.

Except you came too soon.

Yeah. When are we going to get our elections back? You cannot see what went on in the computers, so you cannot canvas it. You can't verify. You can't scrutinize. You can't see anything. All you got to do is like, oh, okay. Oh, yeah, we believe a computer. Next thing you'll believe AI, right, or Google. Oh, boy.

Thank you. Ryan Vortish, followed by Penny Brock.

Okay. GOOD AFTERNOON CHAIR ANDREOLA AND COMMISSIONERS. FOR THE RECORD MY NAME IS RYAN VORDISH AND I'M THE NORTHERN NEVADA DEMOCRACY COORDINATOR WITH SILVER STATE VOICES. WE ARE A NONPARTISAN NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION WHOSE MISSION CENTERS ON BUILDING A MORE ROBUST DEMOCRACY BY EXPANDING VOTER ACCESS FOR HISTORICALLY UNDERREPRESENTED COMMUNITIES AND COLLABORATING WITH ELECTION ADMINISTRATORS TO ENSURE SMOOTH EFFICIENT ELECTION PROCESSES. I'm here today to express my sincere appreciation for our election administrators, the poll workers, administrative staff, and the registrar voters for their hard work and dedication during the 2026 primary election. Each election cycle, I organized Washoe County's nonpartisan election protection poll monitoring program. During the primary, we dispatched 58 nonpartisan volunteers to vote centers across the county to assist voters in our community, track election law compliance, and observe the voting process up close. Our volunteers spent over 400 hours at the polls during which they overwhelmingly reported how helpful, efficient, and professional election staff were. From cheering on first time voters to patiently walking folks through using the new ballot marking devices, poll workers created a welcoming environment that empowered Washoe County voters to make their voices heard this election season. When issues did arise, the Registrar of Voters Office was quick to communicate with our team, listen to our concerns, and resolve them to ensure that every voter had a safe and accessible voting experience. We'd like to recognize the registrar's unwavering commitment to accessibility this election cycle, both through the implementation of Nevada's first-ever ADA curbside voting program and the efforts to ensure that voting materials were made available in Spanish. It is a true testament to the integrity of their team and their unwavering dedication to Washoe County voters. Thank you.

Thank you. Penny Brock, followed by Janet Butcher.

Penny Brock, for the record. In the Ten Commandments, it says, thou shall not steal. It also says, thou shall not lie. We in Washoe County are faced with, are our elections accurate and truthful? We have brought forward many reasons why we do not believe our elections are truthful. I heard the Wyoming Secretary of State recently in a short video clip, and he was beside himself. It was because of the ballot marking devices. Excuse me. He said he had no way to confirm that the ballot marking devices, the votes were even recorded, let alone accurate. and he was beside himself. For the first time, we have ballot marking devices. I used it. Knowing what he had said and other things I had read, I did not believe my vote was being accurately recorded, if recorded at all. That is a huge concern. I gave you papers in November 18th when ROV McDonald asked that you approve the ballot marking devices. It was a paper from Berkeley IT professors and Princeton IT professors. And their papers written in I think it was 23 said, the ballot marking devices are unsecure and cannot be trusted. And yet that's what we got this year. That is a huge concern. It concerns me also when we keep hearing about undeliverable ballots. Well, a returned ballot is also undeliverable, and yet ROV McDonald refuses to recognize that. I question that. The other thing is, this is out. What happens to a mail ballot in the mail? A secure election process depends on chain of custody. According to the election mail researchers, there is currently no nationwide system that reconciles ballots received from the election office, ballots delivered, ballots returned as undeliverable or returned. The Secretary of State put out a report on June 11th. He showed that Clark County had tabulated 99% of their ballots at that time. Washoe County was the worst. We were at 80%. This does not make sense. This needs to be investigated. We as taxpayers provided all this expensive election equipment. How could it be that we were at 80% below even the rural counties, but especially Clark County? How did we not match Clark County?

Thank you.

Janet Butcher, followed by Rob Lynn Williams.

Janet Butcher, for the record, first and foremost, I would like to remind everybody that our forefathers created a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Nowhere in our founding documents is the word democracy. But people keep trying to change it, especially the left. Anyway, also, I think we're being remiss in thanking Commissioner Clark for securing a good cost for the Longley facility. um also my numbers i don't think jive with um mr mcdonald's but i haven't had a chance to look since he just did the presentation i haven't had a chance to really verify but while he was talking i noticed on 6 13 there were There were 1,090 uncured votes. On 6-15, there were 943, so a difference of 147. Altogether, there were 2,390 uncured votes. Votes that were kicked out for the various reasons like I said the other day. Some of them were when they were called said, I didn't get a ballot. My signature doesn't match. Well, of course, if you didn't get a ballot and somebody else sent it in, your signature's not going to match. People who, yes, as Mr. McDonald said, deaf, if they've been dead six years, why are they still getting a ballot? So anyway, I know you're going to rubber stamp it. You're going to fall back on the law. Mr. Large is an attorney, yes, but I didn't hear anything he said that said you have to say yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Rob Lynn Williams, followed by Donna Hawkins.

I HADN'T REALLY PLANNED TO SPEAK AGAIN, FRANKLY. I'M QUITE UPSET. AND I JUST DECIDED I'M GOING TO TAKE THIS TIME, I'M GOING TO APOLOGIZE FOR BEING HOT HEADED ON THIS. I HAVE BEEN DOING THIS SINCE Any support or questioning of what I have seen, why I think it's a concern, no feedback, no follow-up, no interest, no interest in what observers are going to see in the new building. We have a lot to say. You have never followed up, any of you. with why we come, why we spend our time sitting there and watching. Why do we do it? How can this be prevented? Well, for one thing, There have been decisions made by the registrar that has continued to fuel this fire. One of them could be that he brought in Ryan Gustafson. He didn't let us know. We didn't know who this person was. We see someone come in we have never seen going to our ballot counting machines. Even he had a scan disc of votes and he was inserting it into the tabulators. We didn't know who that was. We didn't know if he was a Dominion staff representative, a bad actor. That could have been alleviated. Instead, we're photographing this guy. Like, who is this guy? All we had to do is be told that didn't happen. It is a partial truth that we have used intake on election day in the garage. That is a partial truth. These people could have told us, and they said they had, but that was an untruth. None of us were ever notified. In fact, the media was notified to go out. We still were sitting looking, wondering why it wasn't happening. It wasn't really until we heard noise, we didn't see tables be set up, and then I found out by looking out the door. We've been treated poorly and the reaction is to just attack with slanderous allegations that have no base of proof. We have a registrar that has done more damage to whether or not we feel confident that our elections are truly the votes of the people because he doesn't know how to do that. He doesn't come from that background. He doesn't have heads. He doesn't, he didn't have experience with staff. He doesn't know how to work with the public. He doesn't know how to diffuse problems. Maybe start there and maybe we'll do, we will.

Thank you. Donna Hawkins, followed by George Eddie Lorton.

My name is Donna Hawkins, and I'm going to want to talk about the signature thing. I want to talk about the signature. I was a caregiver for my husband who passed away with brain tumors and cancer. I had the durable power of attorney of my husband. I'm not talking about this election. My husband could only have signed his name with an X. You're verifying people's signatures. People's signatures change all the time as we get older. It's never the same as it was when we first registered. So I have a real problem with that, and there's a lot of people with disabilities, and they're not going to be signing exactly how they signed in the past. And that's all I really want to say about it.

Thank you. George Eddie Lorton.

Well, me again for the last time. Thank you very much for your time, and thank you for trying to do your best. It's like TMI, too many options, you know? I mean, I'm sure it's hard to corral everything, but I know you did your best. But now, so I ended up also, I would like to suggest, too, it is unfortunate we have lower voter turnout, and it's because people aren't confident with the system. But it's a real bummer when special interest groups and unions decide your elections because them people vote. So it's unfortunate more of the public doesn't vote. And, you know, I kind of got the short end to the governor in different things, but we still run hard. But for 380 votes out, I hope you consider maybe in Fallon they did a special election. Because there could be other issues that this gentleman over here didn't find. There's just too many things that can happen. We're all honest about it. I just love the old paper ballot days and hand count in the precincts. But, you know, we've morphed into all these things in mail and everything else. And I think it's unfortunate, too, like Mr. Clark. We should verify. I don't think this future possible governor, Mr. Aaron Ford, would try to sue you now because he's running for governor. I'd really expose him. So now I hope you can vote your conscience. There's mistakes. And I hope we could get to the bottom of it. Sometime, too, after the election, I wish he'd be available for Q&As where the public wants to come in and could maybe understand it more to where you could do a brainstorm and brainchild and make the system better for them and us to so we regain more confidence in the system. So I like that, but I don't think now because you weren't clear on it if this is just an administrative issue to where you have to vote yes and why waste the time every other issue on the agenda you have a yes and a no it's very precise and you have a voice and you're not going to get sued if you say yes or no so why is this one to where aaron ford last time tried to threaten suing and jeannie of course voted no but he didn't sue her because you know you usually bluff in the legal field too sometimes i have many attorneys so I hope you can vote your conscience. There's some issues here that maybe would take a little while to review or maybe special elections and little things if there was a mistake. But mine, there was weird things going on from the reporting of the data. Later, once my attorney reached out, he was cooperative on some stuff. But like I said, I'm a business analyst, forensics auditor. There's no way in two 600 drops. You could be one vote apart two times in a row. Mathematically impossible. Out of 600 votes, your one vote difference, it just doesn't make sense to me. So if we could, you know, vote your conscience because nobody can sue you if you're on this board and vote right. That's a bluff. So, I mean, sometimes having legal issues is like playing poker. And I am glad for the rodeo. We love the rodeo. The only years we didn't have it was during COVID there, and I love the Reno Fair. And we love our 250.

Thank you.

Thank you. That's everyone signed in in chambers.

Thank you so much. I'm just going to take a 10-minute break, and so I appreciate you all. We'll be right back. It's 12.16, and I'm going to take a 10-minute recess. Thank you. 1228. Thank you so much. Could we confirm that? Mr. Herman, are you still on the line with us? Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. All right. Um, We have certainly heard public comment, and I just want to make a couple comments before I open it up to questions from the board from the floor. Number one, I think it's really, really great that, and I've already thanked you, and I'm going to thank everyone again, including the observers. that we recognize that as things evolve, that we can do a better job of keeping people informed, truly keeping people informed. And so I think hearing, for instance, that people are feeling dismissed or feeling that better improvement for diffusing problems are heard. But today, again, we're here, and I'm going to ask the attorney for clarification on a couple things. I wanted to just ask if you would be so kind to share again why we're here today, why we're here today. And I do want to define, because at the highest level, I have had many conversations with legal in terms of it truly being a ministerial function, and I'd like if you would be so kind to address that as well from a legal perspective.

Thank you, Chair. Michael Large, District Attorney's Office, for the record. We are here because of NRS 293.387, which has a canvas of returns, and it provides that as soon as returns from all precincts and districts in any county have been received by the Board of County Commissioners, the Board shall meet and canvas the returns. The canvas must be completed on or before the 10th day following the election. In making its canvas, the Board shall note separately any clerical errors discovered and take account of the changes resulting from the discovery. IN REGARD TO WHETHER IT'S A MANDATORY OR DISCRETIONARY, IT'S BOTH. BUT THE FIRST PART OF THAT STATUTE IS A MANDATORY ACT. THE BOARD SHALL MEET AND CANVASS THE VOTE. THE SECOND PART IS DISCRETIONARY IN TERMS OF, WHICH IS WHAT YOU HEARD FROM MR. MCDONALD IN REGARD TO THE CLERICAL ERRORS THAT WERE NOTED BY THE REGISTER OF VOTERS OFFICE IN TERMS OF THE ELECTION, WHICH IS WHAT WILL BE, IF THE BOARD APPROVES, THAT'S WHAT WILL BE SUBMITTED TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE.

Thank you. And then just as a quick follow-up, if there is, what is the process for any candidate that is actually in the primary election? What is the process if you feel that there needs to be additional clarification in terms of the final count for the final number?

Pursuant to Nevada statute, the only way that a recount can occur is after the canvas of the vote. NRS 293.403 provides that any candidate defeated at any election may demand and receive a recount for the vote of the office. They have three working days after the canvas of the vote to do so.

Are they three business days?

Or three working days.

Three working days. Thank you. All right. Thank you for the clarification. I'll open it up. I'll actually first go to Commissioner Herman. Do you have any questions or any need for any clarification? No. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Clark? No. Commissioner Hill? Vice Chair Garcia? No. All right, I don't have any further questions either, so I'm going to actually entertain a motion at this time.

Madam Chair, happy to make a motion. Move to approve the proposed Washoe County Board of County Commissioners Declaration of Canvas of the Vote in order for the 2026 primary election.

We have a motion by Commissioner Hill. Do we have a second? Second. We have a second by Vice Chair Garcia. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. So we have a vote of four to one. The motion carries. Thank you. We'll go ahead now and move to item six, which is public comment.

Thank you, Madam chair. This is your final public comment and comment heard under this item will be limited to three minutes per person. It may pertain to matters both on and off the commission agenda. Unused time may not be allocated to other speakers and please make your comments to the commission as a whole.

Thank you. Do we have public comment? Cliff Nellis followed by Veronica Cortez. Thank you.

Cliff Nellis, I just want to remind you guys of something. The lawyer is not a judge. And when you do an inspection of the vote and verify that it's valid, it's not fraudulent, it's a serious thing if you certify something as fraudulent. And has any evidence of it being possibly fraudulent? Did you guys know that it's actually a felony? And they were They were attacking Mr. Clark and Mrs. Herman, and the last one, threatening to throw them in jail. Actually, you guys all could be thrown in jail. You probably should have for the 2024 election, except for Mr. Clark and Mrs. Herman. And then Aaron Ford and Mr. Hicks should have been thrown in jail, too. Maybe Mr. Trump can get this done this next time. I don't know. But this coming up election is going to be really important. Hopefully we can get the Save America Act in and stuff like that. But you know what you guys could do? Just kind of throw a bone to us. I mean, even what Mr. St. John was asking. Just maybe even do that after the fact. Or maybe an after the fact hand count of 100% of the paper ballots. That's what I'm asking for. And then it's either going to verify or it's going to debunk this whole election system that we have, this electronic voting thing. And I'm pretty sure what will happen, the reason that you guys didn't allow it last time, 22 years ago, and the reason you won't this time is because you know it will be debunked. Because, you know, the Democrat Socialists of America run this election, you know. I mean, we had a gal named Amy Powell, a liberal Democrat. lawyer from California. I was holding signs for Marsha Burke Bigler. And she was so upset about the signs, she came and stole them and stuck them in her car and I had to call the cops to get them back. And then I found out she's here down in the ROV. One of the certifiers, I think two or three certifiers. How did that ever happen?

And we still have the same people running the ROV.

No one ever explained to me, how did this communist from California Get here and register our voters, be one of the people to certify things beforehand before you guys get it. And who are the people that do all this counting? I mean, I don't know. Okay, so it's up to you. Are you going to give us a real count? Or maybe Mr. Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, he confiscated the ballots. That's what I was asking Mr. Balaam to do. Do that. No, he wouldn't do it. And then some judge blocked Mr. Bianco, but that's what we need done. If we had a real sheriff, he would do that.

Thank you. Veronica Cortez, followed by Janet Butcher.

Hello again, commissioners. It's Veronica Cortez. Now, I honestly, I didn't vote in the last election. I think, I don't even know when it was, I'm not gonna lie. Because when I was in legislation, before I wasn't a legislator, but I did advocate for Nevada School Nutrition Association. So my job was to go to Washington DC and advocate for money. So I know how that works. I know how we talk to people. I know the difference between the advocate and the lobbyist. I didn't know anything about elections, I didn't know about a primary, I didn't know about a general election. Now, I was raised in Mexico, every summer I'd go down there, so, I don't know if you know this, there's a lot of corruption in Mexican government. A lot of corruption in Mexican government, so I was raised around that, and I was just used to it. I was like, There was actually a funny saying, saying ganale al pri, pri is the, it's the group that's always gonna win. And so there's a saying that says, win the group that's always gonna win, good luck. And in 1993 when I was down there studying in the university before I graduated high school here, there was a candidate named Colosio, and Colosio spoke for the people, he represented the ranchers, and they had this huge rally in the city, and everybody's like, yay, Colosio! And somebody walked up and they shot him in the head. And that was it. And I kind of didn't understand, and because I learned about government here in history class, I was like, how could they do this? Is nobody going to be held responsible for taking this person's life because he just wants to make it better?

And unfortunately, that's almost what we've come to.

My husband's Indian, and in India, you get one day to vote, you walk up, you get your little dot, and then that's it, and then they count the tallies. In Mexico, it's the same thing. You get one day, you vote, and then that's it. But they're openly corrupt. And that's what's kind of difficult here because I'm not saying anybody's corrupt, but if there is corruption and fraud, it just seems like the people not getting upset possibly could be complicit. I'm not saying they are, but because I know absolutely nothing about voting and this and that, what I did learn today was that the registrar voters found fraud, the commissioners know about fraud, the people know about fraud, And now you did this canvassing of the vote, and what I learned was after the canvassing of the vote, now we can ask for a hand count. So since Sun Valley was mentioned twice for fraud, and I represent Sun Valley, I am requesting a hand count. We need a hand count. The only way Sun Valley is going to be adequately represented is by a hand count. You have the choice to do this. When I say you, I mean everybody in this room. We're doing what we need to do. We're coming to the meetings. We're telling you it's unfair. He just told you, yeah, there's fraud, but what are we going to do? Specifically Sun Valley two times. Not fair. Not fair. Hand count. We deserve it. Washoe County deserves hand count. Thank you.

Thank you.

Janet Butcher followed by Penny Brock.

Janet Butcher, for the record, thank you for the rubber stamp. I always correct things if I find out that I'm wrong, especially if people come to me directly and not through other people demanding that I take something down or change it. Anyway... I thanked Reggie, and I guess it was George that answers the questions. I think it should be Reggie, but I'm going to quote George Washington. If to please the people we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hands of God. Thank you. Penny Brock?

Penny Brock for the record. Well, I'm happy to report things are happening in Washington, D.C. that will affect our elections in Nevada and Washoe County. The Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court is getting ready to hand down a decision and it's looking very favorable that there will be no ballot counting after election day this year. This year. That means the general election. Secretary of State Aguilar said he's considering this. Oh, so he wants to go up against the Supreme Court? And perhaps our county? President Trump has said any state or county that does not follow federal law, Supreme Court decisions, or executive orders, he will cut off the federal funds to the states in the county. Secondly, we also have the SAVE Act pending in Washington, D.C. Sadly to say, Republican Senate Leader Thune is holding it up. Well, President Trump has figured out some different ways to get it passed. He's done an executive order. Number three, besides the Supreme Court, is he has now put it in the reconciliation bill. That has to do with funding. This may be the way, and this has to be passed soon. So I am very hopeful shortly that we in Nevada and Washoe County will know what we're looking at for our general elections. And I'm hoping that ROV Andrew McDonald is getting ready for that because there will not be mail ballot counting after election day. It will have to be done before. So as an observer, I'm thankful that I won't have to be observing after election day for seven or eight more days. So I just wanted you to be aware, and to McDonald to be aware that these things are coming. And so we the people are very hopeful. I am hopeful for the SAVE Act, where it will be everything we want, paper ballots, voting on election day only, no universal mail-in ballots, just absentee, which you have to ask because you're sick, disabled, traveling, or I think there's one other, but that's the way it used to be, and it will be hand counting. We will restore fair, honest, transparent, and honest elections in America, in Nevada, and I'm especially thrilled because it will apply to Nevada where I live. Thank you.

Thank you. We have nobody else signed in.

Thank you. We'll go ahead and close public comment at this time. We'll open it up to commissioners and county manager announcements. Manager Thomas.

Thank you. This is item number seven. This includes reports and updates to include boards and commission updates, requests for information or topics for future agendas. I don't have anything. Commissioner Clark.

I have no comment.

Commissioner Hill. Vice Chair Garcia. Commissioner Herman, are you still with us?

I am, but I don't have anything more to say.

All right. Well, thank you for always checking. Sorry to keep on asking if you're still there.

It's okay. You can't see what it is. I know.

I can't. So thank you for your patience on that. I don't have anything either, so I'd like to thank everybody for attending. I'd like to also thank everyone in terms of a lot of what you've shared, a lot of what you've provided. I hope that you submit your questions and there's a commitment for 60 days for that not only to stay up but to be receiving them and then also to anything that needs to be investigated that it's either investigated or responded because the canvas of the vote as we just heard is actually a function of the reporting that occurred today and that's what we fulfilled. So thank you so much. We're going to go ahead and adjourn at 1245. Thank you.