Thursday, October 28, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Nye clerk clarifies comments on ballots

Nye County Clerk Sam Merlino on Wednesday clarified comments she made about paper printouts generated by electronic voting machines. Her remarks came a day after Secretary of State Dean Heller blasted her for saying the printer tape merely serves as a backup.

Merlino's original comment was reported in Tuesday's edition of the Review-Journal and came in response to a Pahrump voter who never saw a printout of her ballot and was worried her votes were not recorded.

"I didn't mean to dismiss the paper trail as unimportant," Merlino said Wednesday. "I just wanted to reassure the voter that their vote was counted. The vote was counted, even though there was no piece of paper."

In a strongly worded statement Tuesday, Heller called Merlino's initial assessment of the printer tape "ill informed and an affront to the voters of Nevada."

"I am personally shocked to hear such a statement from someone who is responsible for establishing the highest degree of voter confidence possible," Heller said in the statement. "That is the purpose of the V-PAT printer, to assure voters in this state that their vote has been duly counted and recorded exactly as they intended, not to serve merely as a backup."

The printing problem occurred Oct. 21, the second day of early voting in Pahrump, 60 miles west of Las Vegas.

Merlino said that was the only day of early voting in Pahrump that she missed because she was on business in the county seat of Tonopah, 165 miles away.

The misfeed, which caused a 30-minute delay for voters, had already been fixed by the time Merlino called to remind election workers of the process for loading paper.

"Yes, it definitely was our mistake, but we do have procedures in place and everyone has been through training," Merlino said.