Like flying, elections leave no margin for error

Amid the Cold War, Air Force Maj. Harvard "Larry" Lomax found himself taxiing a plane full of nuclear weapons to the edge of an airstrip at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina.

Usually, nuclear alerts were simple exercises to prepare the crews for the "real thing" and their excited chatter filled the plane.

This time, the alert was the real thing.

"It was essentially the end of the world on both sides," Lomax said.

The men wore fearful expressions and sat silently as the aircraft reached the end of the runway.

Fifteen minutes after the handful of planes -- loaded with weaponry designed to wipe entire countries off the map -- scrambled into position, the crews were called back to base.

"We didn't know what the hell was going on," Lomax said of the 1979 incident. "To this day, I don't know what caused it. They never told us."

That was half a lifetime ago for Lomax, who has been Clark County's registrar of voters for 11 years.

The retired Air Force colonel, who accumulated more than 4,000 hours of flight time in his 30-year military career, now is in charge of voter registration, elections and ballots -- a far cry from nuclear warfare, military tactics and advice to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on national security issues.

Lomax came to Las Vegas in 1998 after he faced mandatory military retirement for a colonel. He perused job listings on the Internet, looking to move close to his three grown children in California. When a listing for Clark County assistant registrar popped up, he applied and got the job a few weeks later.

He spent his first year in Clark County as assistant registrar. He joined the office at a time when it had been laced with controversy. Officials underestimated how many voter machines were needed, which caused long lines in the 1996 primary election. A glitch forced one Assembly primary to be repeated twice. Then there was a misunderstanding with the vendor over how many election machines were to be purchased.

But the problems were fixed, and elections have been almost flawless during Lomax's tenure. He can't recall how many elections he has been involved with -- 25 to 30, he guessed.

This year, he witnessed a record number of candidates, almost 400 people, file to run in county races.

He also saw the most people apply to be election workers in his 12 years. So many applied for the job, which only pays $120 for the day, that people were turned away.

"It's clearly evident times are tough because we had to cut off applications," Lomax said. "We had so many people come in that we had to say we were full."

In the backrooms of the cavernous warehouse that is Clark County's Election Center, 965 Trade Drive, are sealed cases of voting equipment and ballot paperwork ready to be shipped off to precincts throughout the county. And the mobile voting trucks are being stocked.

For now, Lomax and his crew are preparing for early voters and the June 8 primary election.

However, reminders of his past life are never far away.

Framed photos of B-52s and other large aircraft he has piloted adorn his office walls, a shrine to his military accomplishments. Pictures of his family and friends line bookcase shelves. A framed flag that flew atop the Pentagon sits behind his chair, a retirement gift after he left the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala.

The 65-year-old Las Vegas resident said he remembers sitting in his office at the college where he taught leadership and ethics, and laughing with his fellow Air Force colonels days before he left for Las Vegas. Who goes from a military career spanning three decades to organizing local elections in some location chosen randomly?

But Lomax said he misjudged the registrar's job for its "enormous amount of attention to detail."

"There's not a lot of jobs that I'm aware of where no mistake is tolerated," he said. "You can't misprint a name. We'll send out 850,000 ballots, the printer misprints five, and that'll end up on the front page of a newspaper. That happened a few years ago. If anything is wrong with the election, that is huge news."

Lomax enlisted hours after he graduated with his bachelor's degree in English literature from Stanford in 1967. He had been drafted his junior year of college but deferred a year so he could graduate. He headed to Oakland to get his draft physical in the midst of Vietnam protests. Spray-painted peace symbols were everywhere and men trying to dodge the draft wore dresses in hopes of being passed over.

"They were doing everything they could not to get drafted," Lomax said while chuckling at the memory.

A yellow line started at the front door of the building where he got his physical. A sergeant screamed in his face to "follow that line" and "keep your eyes on the floor."

"You weren't even in the military yet, and they were yelling at you."

His wife of 43 years, Annie, also laughs when she remembers those times.

They were 21 years old when they met; he was between his junior and senior years of college. It was love at first sight, and they were married four months later. But they got off to an "interesting" start, as she lacked any real knowledge about the Air Force.

"Larry would say he couldn't land the damn plane, and I'd take him seriously," she said. "He'd call me, and I wasn't at home. I was at church praying so he could land the plane. But he meant he couldn't land it as fluidly as he wanted to while he was learning how to fly.

"It sounds so stupid, but I was so young."

Packing up the family 18 times in 30 years seemed like a lot, especially with three small children, Annie said. But that's the Lomax family: extremely flexible.

Still, it was never easy sending her husband to do life-threatening work.

"It's like having a husband who is a fireman or a policeman. You know he is highly trained and qualified, so you trust them to do the job they have to do," she said.

It's easier now that he deals with angry voters rather than nuclear warfare.

"He just loves doing what he's doing. He was able to come in and formulate a real working machine, and that's what he did in the military."

Contact Kristi Jourdan at kjourdan@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0279.