Boulder City recall effort put at risk

If you didn't cast a ballot when the jerk was elected in the first place, you can forget about signing his recall petition.

That, in layman's terms, was the opinion issued Wednesday by the Nevada attorney general's office, which backed a new interpretation of state law making it more difficult to recall elected officials.

Secretary of State Ross Miller offered the new reading of the law in March, after questions were raised regarding an ongoing recall drive in Boulder City.

Under Miller's interpretation, the only voters allowed to sign the recall petitions now being circulated in Boulder City are those who voted in the elections of the two City Council members targeted.

Wednesday's opinion, authored by Senior Deputy Attorney General Nhu Nguyen, offered a similar take.

But Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax didn't agree with Miller in March, and he doesn't agree with Nguyen now.

"I'm not a lawyer, but I don't even agree with the logic they used in it (the legal opinion)," he said.

Despite his personal feelings, however, Lomax has no plans to defy the state's top lawyer and chief elections officer. "I'm going to do what they tell me," he said.

Already, though, recall organizers in Boulder City are promising to challenge the new rules should their petition drive fail.

"We have an obligation to the thousands of people who signed our petition," said lead recall organizer Christine Milburn.

She called Miller's action "an incorrect decision that disenfranchises voters."

To force a recall election, Milburn and company have until June 5 to collect 1,085 valid signatures against City Councilwoman Linda Strickland and 1,268 signatures against City Councilman Travis Chandler.

The new interpretation of the law significantly reduces the number of people available to sign the petitions. Instead of going after all of Boulder City's almost 10,000 registered voters, petitioners will have to focus on the roughly 5,000 people who voted when Chandler and Strickland won their seats last year.

The attorney general's opinion does not address another aspect of Miller's recent directive regarding ballot petitions.

As part of the same interpretation in March, the secretary of state ruled that the address included with a signature on a ballot petition -- recall or otherwise -- must match that voter's registration information. If it doesn't, a clerk must notify the voter and clear up the discrepancy before counting the voter's signature.

Lomax said the county hadn't been operating that way because he knows of nothing in the law that requires residents to keep their addresses current with the registrar to maintain their voter registrations.

The address verification requirement could mean more work for the various groups now collecting signatures for statewide ballot initiatives, though some were already operating under the rules laid out by Miller.