Gardner, Tolbert win commissioner race, Tarkanian wins primary

Sitting commissioners Danny Tarkanian and Mark Gardner won their primary races. Nate Tolbert won the District 5 race to replace outgoing commissioner Walt Nowosad, according to results released on Friday morning.

Unlike Gardner and Tolbert, Tarkanian still faces a challenge from nonpartisan Brian Dempsey and Democrat Jason Garrett Gibson in the General Election in November.

With only a few hundred ballots still arriving in the mail and candidates’ vote percentages not changing significantly, it’s a pretty good bet the winners won’t change either.

Turnout barely cracked 32 percent among all voters on Friday morning and was 44.21 percent for Republicans. Only 8.26 percent of nonpartisan and minor party voters cast a ballot. Around 3,000 voters used an election machine while more than 11,000 used their mailed ballots, to bring the total vote to 14,656 as of 8:30 a.m. Friday.

First results that included mailed ballots received by Monday and Tuesday’s in-person voting were released about an hour after polls closed, according to Clerk-Treasurer Amy Burgans.

“It’s been a good week,” she said. “The main thing is finishing up what we have and for me to get people to check the cure list. We will continue updating that.”

There have consistently been around 60-75 voters on the list whose ballots require cures, Burgans said.

“Every time we get two off, another two end up on the list,” she said.

She urged voters to check the list at www.govotedouglas.com to learn whether they need to come fix their ballot before the 5 p.m. Monday deadline.

While ballots coming in the mail may arrive as late as Saturday, as long as they are postmarked Election Day, the primary election is over.

Burgans said there have been a couple of instances where people tried to drop off ballots after 7 p.m. Tuesday and were told it’s too late.

She said the clerk’s office has also received around 10 presidential preference primary ballots signed and dated for the primary.

Because there was no clear marking on the outside of the envelope indicating which election it was for, it was a puzzle until a voter turned up to complain about getting two ballots, and one was for the February election.

She said that she’s working with the vendor to include a date on ballots sent out for the general election in November.

“We’ve never had this before,” she said.

Election Results as of Friday morning

U.S. Senate

Democrats

Jacky Rosen       3,248        141,292

Troy Zakari Walker   51     5,766

Mike Schaefer   55     3,846

None of these    57     3,450

Republicans

Sam Brown       6,500        100,610

Tony Grady        1,197       

Jeff Gunter         814  24,592

Jim Marchant    411  10,962

Bill Conrad        238  9,279

Stephanie Phillips     138  3,688

Garn Mabey       59     1,781

Ronda Kennedy 53     1,726

Barry Lindemann      32     829

Eddy Hamilton  16     456

Vincent Rego     16     300

Gary Marinch    13     224

None of these    494  6,927

U.S. Congress

Republican

Mark Amodei    5,756        42,335

Fred Simon        3,954        23,501

Commission District 1

Danny Tarkanian       5,201

James McKalip  4,499

Commission District 3

Mark Gardner   6,387

Michael Tanner 2,420

Dean Paris         521

Commission District 5

Nathan Tolbert 6,056

Janet Freixas     2,978

Regent District 9

Carol Del Carlo  6,820        23,892

Gary Johnson    2,426        9,491

Bret Delaire       2,054        7,901

State Education Board

Angela Orr         5,483        53,595

Paul Davis         2,491        22,606

Matthew Buehler       2,090        21,977

Dorzell King      1,089        10,472

School Board Trustee

District 1

Yvonne Wagstaff        10,308

District 4

Markus Zinke    10,285