On a recent afternoon, George Guthrie with the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Office was showing off some new equipment.
“We’ve got a new ballot machine here,” he said. “As you can see, it’s quite large.”
In addition to the sorter, which is roughly the size of an upright piano, the office is also getting four more ballot scanning machines. And in mid-August, they’ll be switching to a new voter registration system.
“It’s going to help us manage our voter rolls,” Guthrie explained.
Guthrie said the updates should help the general election run smoothly. If he’s right, it’ll be a nice change of pace.
In early July, Republican county commissioners put Washoe County in the national spotlight when they refused to certify a recount of the primary election. They’d already certified the primary itself.
But for the recount, they said a series of errors made them question the outcome.
“We hear about the ballots, we hear about the things that are wrong, we hear [there are] hundreds of things wrong,” said Commissioner Mike Clark.
His colleague on the board, Commissioner Clara Andriola, argued for further investigation of the election returns.
“It’s not the first time that we’ve heard a lot of concerns of procedures, a lot of concerns of alleged mishaps,” she said. “Given that, I am not going to certify the vote.”
Election officials and national experts blame those errors on the election deniers who’ve been harassing – and in some cases, threatening – public employees. That’s led to resignations, and a loss of institutional knowledge around the country.
And, they argue, it all but guarantees some things will slip through the cracks.
Cari-Ann Burgess is Washoe County’s interim registrar of voters. She got the job as a battlefield promotion after her predecessor resigned in January, just five months before the primary election.
“It was like trying to control a freight train on expired tracks,” Burgess remembered. “Because the previous [registrar] had left, I was basically trying to do three jobs.”
That left the office short-staffed, Burgess said, which led to mistakes.
Those included a precinct that received ballots for the wrong city council races; residents who got mail ballots even though they opted out; and candidates who were left off sample ballots.
“That was because we didn’t have a second set of eyes to look at those,” Burgess said. “Now we do.”
Burgess is the county’s third registrar of voters since 2022. And the bleeding hasn’t stopped there. Among all the staff currently at the registrar's office, just one person was there for the 2020 election.
Since then, elections officials in more than half of Nevada’s counties have resigned.
Burgess said the high turnover is because it’s much harder to work in elections now than when she first started.
“There’s days that I go home, and I just cry,” she said.
Gowri Ramachandran, who directs the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said Washoe commissioners’ failure to certify the recount is just one episode in a national trend – one that’s accelerating as Election Day draws near.
“You see a lot of the same types of accusations being made, the same excuses being made, for why not [to] certify,” she said.
She explained that elections offices around the country are struggling with intense harassment from election deniers. And officials who support that movement are using the errors that follow as ammunition.
But Ramachandran said no matter what, local leaders must certify election results.
“There’s nothing that said, ‘If you don’t like the outcome, you can delay,’” she said. “It’s an obligation, it’s something they have to do.”
A week after the first vote, commissioners Andriola and Clark reversed course. The election recount was certified – but not before the Nevada Secretary of State sued the county.
Kerry Durmick with All Voting Is Local said this was a first for Nevada. But she also believes the fallout from their decision could lead to positive change.
“The good news is, we’re going to get a court ruling about what happens if a county in Nevada does not certify an election,” she said. “That’s really important.”
Back at the Registrar of Voters’ office, Burgess said her team will be ready when the general election arrives in November.
She pointed out copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence she’d mounted on the wall behind her desk. They remind her of the sacrifices people have made while defending American democracy, she said – and that inspires her to carry on, in spite of harassment from residents and doubt from elected officials.
“If I do not take up my civic responsibility, it’s like stepping on them,” she said. “I am not okay with that.”
