Boulder City Council field narrowed

In the race for two open seats on the Boulder City Council, there is some good news for Duncan McCoy and some bad news for Joe Roche.

Despite a Review-Journal report to the contrary, McCoy won one of the seats outright in Tuesday's primary.

The retired director of the Boulder City Library District captured 25.8 percent of all the votes cast, but voters were asked to vote for two of the 10 candidates in the at-large race. Boulder City Clerk Pamella Malmstrom said McCoy won outright because his name was marked on 50.2 percent of the ballots cast.

As a result, second-place finisher Cam Walker and third-place finisher Bill Smith will square off in the June 2 general election for the one remaining seat.

Roche, who finished fourth on Tuesday, is out of the race.

The same thing happened during the 2007 primary. There were 10 candidates for two City Council seats, and voters were asked to mark two of them on their ballots.

That time, though, Boulder City election officials got caught up in the confusion. On election night, they announced that four candidates would advance to a runoff, then realized the next day that one candidate already had won and one had been eliminated.

Larry Lomax, Clark County registrar of voters, said there was no such confusion at the county's election center Tuesday night. The Boulder City officials on hand were closely tracking the results, especially when it began to look like both McCoy and Walker might win outright, he said.

In the end, McCoy ended up eight votes above the 50 percent line, while Walker fell 45 votes shy of winning outright.

Lomax acknowledged that the way the county posts municipal election results could be a "little more clear."

"We don't show who won or lost on the Web site," he said.

The site also doesn't provide turnout information so people can figure out the results for themselves.

More than 10,000 of Boulder City's almost 17,000 residents are active registered voters. Almost 40 percent of those voters cast ballots in the primary. Turnout countywide was less than 11 percent.

There are no incumbents in the Boulder City Council race. City Councilwoman Andrea Anderson decided not to seek re-election, and Councilman Mike Pacini is being forced out by term limits.

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.