With apologies to Kent Brockman, my faith in representative democracy almost completely evaporated after I read Erich Obermayr’s excellent column in the Sierra Nevada Ally about the excessively interesting special meeting Lyon County held to certify its election results in November. 

Like any good op-ed, it told a compelling story — here were five Republican county commissioners stuck between the rock of representing the opinions of many of their constituents, who largely believed “the election,” for some ethereal definition of the term, was fraudulent, and the hard place of wanting to pat themselves and their county employees on the back for successfully conducting their piece of the election with integrity, thrift and competence. Like any good story, it even had a twist — Dr. Robin Titus, assemblywoman and Minority Floor Leader, submitted a letter to the Lyon County Commission “informing” them, for an astonishingly mendacious definition of the verb “to inform,” that, when the commission accepts its clerk’s report of the county’s election results, they should “put on public record that [they] are not voting that the report is accurate.”

Then I remembered that I was reading an opinion column. If there’s one thing I know about columnists, it’s that good ones try to ground their opinions in truth, but it’s absolutely essential to check their work.

So I did. 

On page three of the commission’s agenda packet for its November 13th meeting was Dr. Robin Titus’ letter — and it was worse than I thought. Apparently, despite Lyon County’s clerk doing “an excellent job on keeping our voter rolls current,” there were reports (by whom?) of several long-deceased Lyon County residents receiving ballots (again, whom?), which were delivered to the good assemblywoman. 

Now, did the most powerful Republican in the Assembly forward the ballots of the dead to the county clerk? Did she strike up a correspondence with county officials to determine how to properly prune voter records in Lyon County, especially after the mail-in primary presumably sent ballots to the very same dead people? Did she ask aloud why long-dead Lyon County residents were still registered to vote in the first place? Alas, she didn’t say, which is curious since, presumably, if she did any of those things, she’d happily brag about her willingness to take initiative, roll up her sleeves, and help her constituents in their time of need. 

Instead, she said her “point is not to criticize our Clerk but to point out that even when an elected official is doing their job, AB 4,” the bill passed in the last special session to temporarily expand mail-in voting to active registered voters in Nevada, “opened the door for election fraud.” Long-dead active registered voters apparently didn’t open the door — no, the door was clearly opened when people actually found out about them.

Her letter, however, got me thinking — Lyon County isn’t the only county she represents. She represents Churchill County, too. Did she encourage them to publicly announce they had inaccurate election results as well? 

If she did, assuming the Churchill County Commission’s minutes are accurate, she didn’t do it in writing. Fortunately, Churchill County, like any good op-ed columnist, also shows its work. I’m pleased to report that their five minutes and three seconds long canvassing meeting was the smoothest and least eventful county commission meeting I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen to, in no small part because Assemblywoman Titus didn’t make her recommendations during public comment, either.

For me, that just raised further questions. Here were two Nevada counties, both run entirely by Republicans, both represented by the same assemblywoman. One had a smooth canvassing process, the other was a brainworm-infested goat rodeo hosted by a dumpster fire. Which experience was more common?

It was time to do some research.

Good luck finding out

The first thing I learned is that many county commissions are woefully behind on their paperwork.

The Esmeralda County Commission, for example, last posted minutes nearly a year ago. The Eureka County Commission, meanwhile, has minutes posted for meetings up to November 6; canvassing, however, took place on November 16. The Storey County Commission isn’t quite as far behind as Esmeralda’s, but also not as current as Eureka County; their most recent posted minutes are from August 18. The worst of this lot by far, however, was the Humboldt County Commission, which had an agenda item to approve minutes from 2016 in their most recent meeting on December 14. 

Neither the Esmeralda, Eureka, Humboldt, nor Storey county commissions had letters from elected officials in their canvassing meeting agendas. Of the four, only the Esmeralda County Commission has a single non-Republican county commissioner (Timothy Hipp, a nonpartisan).

According to routine

The next thing I learned is Churchill County wasn’t the only county to have a largely uneventful canvassing process.

Like Churchill County, the Mineral County Commission opted to have a brief special meeting solely focused on canvassing the results. The Pershing County Commission, meanwhile, included the canvassing of their results as an agenda item within an otherwise routine county commission meeting, in which they, among other things, dedicated some CARES Act funding to a new kitchen range and improved electrical infrastructure for their community center. Like Churchill County, neither Mineral County nor Pershing County reported any issues or concerns regarding the canvassing process within their commission meeting minutes. Carson City’s Board of Supervisors, which functions as a county commission for the territory formerly known as Ormsby County, also canvassed its results without much trouble, though some questions were raised about the effect same-day voter registration had on the election process. 

Mineral County, interestingly enough, has a majority nonpartisan county commission. All of Pershing County’s commissioners are Republicans; the county clerk-treasurer, meanwhile, is a Democrat. 

Both the Lander County Commission and Elko County Commission had largely uneventful canvassing meetings as well, though questions were raised about the voting machines furnished by Dominion Voting Systems in both counties. This would prove to be a recurring theme in other rural county commission meetings since Dominion Voting Systems machines are in use in every county in Nevada and have been for over a decade. Carson City is the only jurisdiction which uses non-Dominion Voting Machines hardware for its elections.

To Elko County’s credit, Lee Hoffman, chairman of the Elko County Republican Party, spoke in favor of the work performed by the county clerk’s office during the course of the election.

Both Lander and Elko county commissions are represented exclusively by Republicans. 

Just asking questions

Unfortunately, things got a little hairier as I kept digging.

In my home county, the process to canvass Washoe County’s votes moved along swimmingly — until it came time to vote. For reasons known only to her, Commissioner Jeanne Herman voted against canvassing the results for Nevada’s second-most populous county.

In Lincoln County, Commissioner Bevan Lister took the opportunity presented by the otherwise routine meeting to canvass the county’s results to attempt to formally protest against the recent changes to statewide election law. According to the meeting’s minutes, Bevan was opposed to the idea of forced mass mailings of ballots to all voters, allowing ballot harvesting by anyone other than family members, and allowing for the receipt of ballots after polls were closed for anyone other than deployed members of the military. His effort was only forestalled by the county district attorney reminding the county commissioners that a motion to protest statewide election law would be a new agenda item; consequently, it could not be considered in that meeting.

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To its detriment, Clark County experienced 99 problems (well, 139 discrepancies in one very close race, to be more accurate). To its credit, one problem it didn’t have was county commissioners complaining about voting machines or mail-in ballots. 

The biggest issue Clark County ran into, other than unceasing protests and lawsuits outside the county election department office, was that the race between former Secretary of State Ross Miller and Las Vegas City Councilman Stavros Anthony was initially too close to call. With only 10 votes separating the two, the 139 discrepancies observed were enough to potentially throw the race in either direction. 

Now, putting those 139 discrepancies into context is important. That many discrepancies in a race for, say, Silver Peak General Improvement District (population perhaps that — if you count some of the neighborhood burros twice) would be a catastrophe. 153,162 votes, however, were cast in the election for Commission District C. That means more than 99.9 percent of the votes were valid — an enviable level of reliability in any context, especially one involving that many people and a new election process. 

Fortunately, this sort of thing happened before and there are provisions in state law to address them, though it took the county commission a couple of tries to get around to exercising them. After first exploring the idea of holding a special election, which would have functionally thrown out the valid 99.9 percent of votes already cast in the election, they eventually settled on recounting the existing votes after some gentle encouragement from the former secretary of state and the Clark County District Court. 

After the recount, it turned out Ross Miller’s margin of victory was 50 percent larger than everyone thought it was — in that it increased from 10 to 15 votes.

Unlike every other county in Nevada, all Clark County commissioners and the county recorder are Democrats. With Ross Miller’s victory in the election for District C, it remains that way for at least another two years.

Here be brainworms

The White Pine County Commissioners’ meeting, however, was where things started to veer into the surreal. 

At the start of the meeting, a constituent testified during public comment that state Senator Pete Goicoechea had suggested to the constituent that counties could refuse to ratify the vote. Before I ready the pitchforks, I’ll note that public comment is not given under oath, so it’s entirely possible the good senator was either misquoted or misrepresented. That public comment, however, set the tone for the county commissioners. Commissioner Shane Bybee asserted without evidence that, after county results were transmitted to the secretary of state (a Republican, remember), there was cause to distrust what happened to election results after that point. This sentiment was seconded by Commissioners Travis Godon and Laurie L. Carson. 

Unlike Lincoln County, the White Pine County Commission ultimately approved a statement that said the county did not endorse the changes to the election process and that “investigations needed to be made into Dominion Voting Systems going forward to ensure a fair, honest and transparency (sic) election.” 

Meanwhile, the Nye County Commission decided to squeeze in the canvassing of its votes as the 30th agenda item of a six-hour long, 47 agenda item-long meeting. This, along with Commissioner Donna Cox’s rather specific question (fast-forward to the four hour mark) about the Venezuelan, Cuban and Chinese funding of Dominion voting machines, followed by her statement that she, and I quote, “just wanted to make you aware of that in case something comes back to bite us if we certify these votes today, although I don’t believe anything happened in our county because it’s so small,” would have been enough to land their canvassing meeting square into the realm of the surreal. 

That, however, would erase the invaluable contribution of Commissioner Leo Blundo to the proceedings (who, as an aside, was arrested less than 10 days after the meeting for allegedly funneling CARES Act funding to his restaurant). Doing his very best police procedural detective impersonation, he grilled the county clerk for the better part of a half an hour about network security, arithmetic, the hardware and software used to conduct the elections, and anything else he could think of. He eventually voted in favor of the canvass, but only “under duress.” 

One voice of something closely approximating reason in the Nye County Commission meeting, however, was Chairman John Koenig, who pointed out that, “if we think there was any fooling in Nye County, then I guess we don’t think [Trump] won in Nye County, which he did. He carried Nye County by a large margin. It says a lot for all of us. The rest of the state, not too bad, but, as usual, the guys down south and the guys down north, well… I’ve got to be careful about what I say.”

Then there was Douglas County.

I’ve written about Douglas County a time or two already and it is always a joy to revisit what passes for representative democratic governance (or, to use local parlance, “Republican” government, which is technically true since Douglas County hasn’t elected anyone other than Republicans to the county commission since 1946). This time around, Commissioner John Engels, the U.S. Cavalry-hatted septuagenarian commissioner who earned some notoriety a while back by starting a fist fight with one of his fellow commissioners, remains the gift that just keeps giving. 

His first question, once he unmuted himself, started with a reference to Sidney Powell, architect of the so-called “Kraken” lawsuits, who was later dismissed from Trump’s legal team by Rudy Giuliani for either upstaging him or being too crazy for even Team Trump, depending on how cynical you might be feeling today. Things quickly flew off the rails from there, however — allow me the luxury of letting him speak for himself about voting machines:

Well, I understand that they are not connected to the internet, but there is a thing called Wi-Fi where they could access it and you wouldn’t even know about it. And with the things that have been going on and it was developed and used in Venezuela. The thing has been sent to Spain and Europe to tally votes or change votes and I’m not saying that happened here, but I’d take those machines out to the dump right now. 

There is, indeed, a “thing called Wi-Fi.”. Wi-Fi was not, however, developed in Venezuela, though I have no doubt it’s used there (it also used in my home). To the best of my knowledge, neither it nor any other wireless technologies are routinely installed on voter machines.

He continues:

My internet connection was interrupted by some Ukrainians who just wanted to hassle us. This happens frequently I hear with the Spectrum system. I don’t think they can handle the load now that they have because typically in the AM around 9:00, 10:00 when everybody’s awake and having their coffee and getting on, the internet just dies and the same thing in the afternoon around this time. So, that’s what happened. Anyway, Dena, I got a question. You mentioned one thing about everything is uploaded to the State and they’re on the Dominion system as well. So, when that upload goes to the State, then it is out of the County’s control at that point. Is that true? 

Speaking as a fellow Spectrum customer, my internet connection has not been knowingly “interrupted by some Ukrainians who just wanted to hassle us,” though I think I’ll try that excuse the next time I push our editors’ patience by submitting my column after deadline. 

As for what happens to vote counts after they leave the county clerk’s office, well, the secretary of state has thoughts about that. 

Oh, and lest anyone think Commissioner Engels is the only low-rent Marx Brother to serve on the Douglas County Commission, Commissioner Barry Penzel — otherwise known as the commissioner Engels engaged in fisticuffs — suggested that Douglas County should require all voters to show a Real ID, the kind you need to board an airplane now, before they’re allowed to vote in order to confirm their citizenship. Considering some of the rhetoric surrounding nationally issued identification by conservatives (type “Real ID conspiracy” into the search engine of your choice to get a sample), this was especially rich. 

Every White Pine, Nye, and Douglas county commissioner is a Republican.

***

After watching hours of county commissioner meetings and reading volumes of minutes, it’s hard to put a pin in this column — but I’m going to try.

The good news is that there are sane Republicans in Nevada — yes, even in the rurals. I found some and did my best to identify as many of them as I could by name. The bad news, however, is there are also some… I’m not going to say they’re “insane” since I’m not a psychologist and calling people “insane” isn’t exactly helpful to those who are actually mentally ill. So, instead, I will say many Republicans in this state — many elected Republicans — have chosen to embrace and evangelize a particularly nihilistic and conspiratorial view of reality. 

And, I think, they’re rewarded for it. 

I don’t know what to do about this beyond naming and shaming those whose stated views of reality are especially egregious, but I’m looking for ideas. I hope you are, too. 

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].