6 Assembly candidates who lost allege voting machine issues

LAS VEGAS — Six Republican Nevada Assembly candidates who lost their primaries by significant margins want an investigation of voting machines they say may have malfunctioned, although elections officials insist nothing went amiss.

The candidates include Diana Orrock, Steve Sanson, Connie Foust, Tina Trenner, Mary Rooney and Blain Jones, who ran on anti-tax platforms and all lost by at least 100 votes in the June 14 election. They filed “statements of contest” in Clark County district court and want a review of sealed paper documentation from voting machines.

“With so many national reports of similar election machine failures and increasing hacking into government computers, candidates are obligated to our sponsors, voters, and all (Nevada) citizens to know that our election works properly,” said Rooney, who lost by 145 votes to fellow Republican Nick Phillips in an open Las Vegas-area district.

Republican Assembly Majority Leader Paul Anderson, who beat Sanson by more than 1,000 votes, called the move sour grapes and “an unfortunate abuse of the election system” according to Las Vegas Review-Journal, which first reported the challenge.

Orrock said it’s suspicious that she lost when an exit poll she commissioned during an early voting period showed her winning. The candidates also question why the total vote count in certain precincts was well above the number who voted in the corresponding Assembly race.

“It would be a rare case for a person to go to the trouble to stop ranching, mining or farm work to travel long distances to show up to vote, and then fail to cast their ballots for important races,” said Trenner, who lost to by 133 votes to Pahrump Assemblyman James Oscarson.

Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria said it’s common for voters to skip certain races. He added that there were no notable malfunctions in voting machines, and said electronic records from the machines were reconciled with entries in paper sign-in books at polling places to ensure the number of ballots cast matched up.

The machines also generate a paper record of the ballots that are tabulated electronically; that redundancy is what the candidates want counted.

“There’s nothing that indicates we need to do that,” Gloria said, adding that he was gathering the documentation anyway in case he’s summoned to court. “They’re convinced that there’s some sort of conspiracy. We have no motivation to cheat anyone.”