Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, left, and her lawyer, Joel Hansen, talk Friday during a break in District Judge Bill Maddox's courtroom in Carson City. She lost a challenge to her Aug. 15 election defeat. Photo by The Associated Press
CARSON CITY -- After hearing evidence of only one person who was unable to vote for Sharron Angle because of Washoe County primary Election Day problems, a Carson City district Court judge tossed out her challenge to Secretary of State Dean Heller's 421-vote margin of victory in the Republican 2nd Congressional District primary.
Angle said she will not appeal the decision to the Nevada Supreme Court and vowed to help Heller win the seat in the Nov. 7 general election.
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"I want to support him for his bid ... and I will do everything I can to help him defeat the Democrat nominee, Jill Derby," she said.
District Judge Bill Maddox found that Angle, a Reno assemblywoman, did not meet the burden of proof required either to nullify the election or declare her the winner.
While there were problems in Washoe County on Election Day, Aug. 15, including the failure of 86 poll workers to show up on time or at all, those problems also did not amount to malfeasance on the part of Registrar of Voters Dan Burk or his office, Maddox said.
But even if there had been persuasive evidence of misconduct on the part of the Washoe elections department or that dozens of Angle voters were disenfranchised, Maddox said he did not have jurisdiction over the 2nd Congressional District primary race. Contested races for Congress are the exclusive purview of Congress, he said.
Maddox said he spent six hours listening to testimony from witnesses brought forward by Angle's attorney, Joel Hansen of Las Vegas, in the event the case was appealed and the Supreme Court ruled that he did indeed have jurisdiction.
Given the shortness of the time for the preparation of the November general election ballots, Maddox said he wanted to cover all the legal issues.
Hansen spent the day trying to show that a number of voters could not cast their ballots for Angle because polling places did not open on time. He also argued that malfeasance on the part of the Washoe elections department tainted the results of the race.
A showing of malfeasance does not require proof that Angle would have picked up the 422 votes needed to win, Hansen said.
"Eighty-six people committed malfeasance here," he said. "I have proven there was malfeasance in office by poll workers."
But Maddox disagreed, saying malfeasance means the commission of an improper act, not the failure of some workers to show up on time.
Jason Woodbury, an attorney from Carson City representing Dean Heller, agreed, saying elections are run by humans who sometimes make mistakes.
"At the end of the day, an election is a human process," he said.
The fact that some potential voters were inconvenienced for up to 45 minutes when some of the Washoe County polling places did not open on time does not amount to malfeasance, Woodbury said.
"Elections are intended to be final," he said. "Let this election be final."
Heller did not attend the hearing and could not be reached for comment.
Burk acknowledged that there were problems on Election Day but said that probably only a handful of potential voters did not ultimately cast ballots.
One of those was Sally Weare Edney, a pediatric nurse who showed up at her polling place about 7:30 a.m. only to find that the voting machine she needed to use in her precinct was not yet up and running. Told to come back in 30 minutes, Edney said she went to work and planned to vote at lunchtime.
She could not get away, and because her shift lasted until 7 p.m., Edney said she did not cast a ballot for Angle as she had planned.
Other witnesses testified about voting machines that did not seem to be working properly and that they did not know whether they had actually voted or not.
Hansen said Angle's case was burdened because it was impossible for her to show how many people did not vote because of the Washoe County election problems. He asked Maddox to call for a new election to ensure that everyone who wanted to vote in the primary had the chance to do so.
"Elections are about knowing who got elected," he said. "I do think the will of the people should be found out in this case."
But Woodbury said no voters were disenfranchised. No voters were turned away. Some were inconvenienced and chose not to return at a later time to cast a ballot, he said. "An inconvenienced voter is not a disenfranchised voter," Woodbury said.
Angle said afterward that she believes contesting the election will serve a purpose.
"We were able to bring the integrity of elections and the value of every single vote to such a prominence that I think we can be assured, I hope we can be assured, that we will have an honest, fair election in November and that we will never see a repeat of what happened in the primary election of August 15," she said.
Before the hearing began, Angle offered to drop her challenge if Burk and his office would sign an agreement listing a number of election reforms and other conditions.
