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Krasner demands recount in tight Northern Nevada race

A candidate for a Northern Nevada assembly seat is asking for a recount. Republican Lisa Krasner lost to Randy Kirner in this election by only 11 votes.

Lisa Krasner continues to shake up the political landscape in Northern Nevada. First, she ran against fellow Republican and incumbent Randy Kirner in the general election to the dismay of some in her party. Now, she’s not stepping aside until she’s sure she lost.

“People have been urging me with more than a hundred phone calls and emails in the last week saying, 'Lisa, please do the recount.' So, with all these people urging me to do it, I feel like I owe it to them."

More than 20,000 votes were cast in the race for Assembly District 26, which covers Incline Village and parts of South Reno. Well over a 1,000 of those were absentee ballots.

"They are paper ballots that are marked on by the voters themselves and, generally speaking, those will count exactly the very same as before. The only possibility for any decision that will affect the outcome would involve the duplicate ballots."

That’s Washoe County Registrar Luanne Cutler.

Those “duplicate ballots” happen when voters select more than one candidate for the same race; that then causes the machine to reject the entire ballot. So the registrar must create a new ballot with all the valid responses for the other races, which can leave room for error.

For that reason, Krasner is most interested in these potential duplicate ballots, but, as it turns out, she can’t just recount those. She has to pick a small sampling of all the votes in several precincts. If there's a 1% discrepancy, the registrar does a full recount of the district.
 
Cutler says this is one of the closest races she has ever seen, but she doesn't foresee it being overturned.

A glitch in the registrar’s computer system on election night has bolstered Krasner’s hopes that there might be some error. But the registrar says they’re confident that hiccup didn’t change any of the votes.

Assemblyman Randy Kirner says he understands why his opponent wants a recount.

“She is welcome to do that. I don't think it will change the outcome. I'm  focused on doing the work of the state."

Still, Krasner is putting up the 2,000 dollars needed, hoping for an unlikely win in what’s been a surprisingly close race.  

Will Stone is a former reporter at KUNR Public Radio.