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Thursday, May 14, 1998
Gates recall fails to meet test
A petition to remove a Clark County commissioner falls short of the signatures needed in a random check.
By Ed Vogel
Donrey Capital Bureau
CARSON CITY -- The secretary of state ruled Wednesday that supporters of a drive to remove Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates from office failed to collect the signatures needed to force a recall election.
"They will have to start all over again," said Secretary of State Dean Heller, Nevada's chief election officer.
Atkinson Gates said she is pleased with Heller's ruling.
"I don't know if this is a win or whatever," she said. "I am just glad this is over. This has been a trying and humbling time in my career."
But Charles Bennion, leader of the group that sought to recall her from office, is not giving up. He vowed to appeal to Heller to reconsider his decision within the next five days.
"We would like the secretary of state to do a personal review," Bennion said. "We are confident we have enough valid signatures."
If Heller rejects his appeal, then Bennion said his organization would file a lawsuit against the secretary of state in District Court in Carson City.
Atkinson Gates said she hopes Bennion puts differences aside and allows her to do the job for which she was elected.
"I want to improve the quality of life of Clark County residents," she said.
Heller threw out the recall based on a random check by the Clark County Election Department of 503 signatures that found only 244 signatures were valid.
Supporters of the recall drive collected 7,474 signatures and needed 4,380 valid signatures to force a recall election. State law requires recall petitioners to collect signatures representing 25 percent of the number of people who voted in Atkinson Gates' 1996 election.
A state law also allows random checks of 500 signatures before the secretary of state can order election workers to verify every petition signature.
If the sample check had found 20 more valid signatures, then the law would have required the department to check every signature for validity, Heller said.
"It's all in black and white," said Heller, who said he doubted any lawsuit against him would prevail. "The law is the law."
Bennion suggested the Clark County Election Department did not perform a valid check because it is led by Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson.
"I remind you her boss is Yvonne Atkinson Gates," he said. "I think the conduct of the registrar reflects that relationship."
Bennion said the petition signatures were collected by National Voter Outreach, a Carson City-based professional petition-gathering organization. Company executive Rick Arnold said his workers checked the signatures on recall petitions against signatures on voter registration records.
"We believe we have far more than 4,380 valid signatures," Arnold said. "We have plenty of signatures."
But Heller said the random check of 503 signatures found 130 belonged to people who are not registered voters. An additional 91 were names of people who do not live in Atkinson Gates' district. Twenty-one names were rejected because the writing was illegible, and 17 were rejected because the writing did not match that on registration forms.
Heller said another 17 signatures were not verified one way or another because they are of people who have registered recently.
He ordered the Election Department to verify the 17 signatures in coming days. Even if all 17 were valid, Heller said, the recall drive still would be three signatures short of forcing a verification of all petition signatures.
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