Tonight at the IVGID meeting, the Co-Chairs of the Committees to Recall Trustees Matt Dent and Sara Schmitz provided an update on the campaign(s).
The Committees had a cushion of more than 25% of the minimum signatures needed to move this to a recall election, but were told by the Washoe County Registrar of Voters Office that they did not have enough verifiable signatures.
For the past 45 days, the Committees have been analyzing the rejected signatures for both Trustees Matthew Dent and Sara Schmitz, and were shocked at the number of errors and inconsistencies made by the County.
- Due to these errors, the Committees filed an appeal with the Secretary of State over 30 days ago.
- The State is working on the appeal and is actively reviewing the signatures, but as this is the first successful signature recall for this office to handle, the process is particularly slow and tedious.
The Recall Committees have spent over 300 hours scouring records and the petitions signed. They found enough errors and inconsistencies to easily exceed the 1,801 required signatures and are now working to contact voters whose signatures were rejected, but should be curable in the eyes of the State. Those names will be posted shortly and they have asked the help from this community to see if you know someone on the list. If you do, please ask that voter to provide their contact information using this form.
Here’s the combined summary the Committees provided:
- 51 names were missed completely and not included in the signature count
- Over 100 names were rejected as the date was missing or hard to read. Most of these were actually easy to read and the Committees are 100% confident that 49 are easily cured or automatically accepted. However, these signatures were included in a code that was not allowed to be cured. They believe they were mis-coded.
- 84 signatures were removed because the people had moved after 2020. All of these should be curable.
- 50 signatures were discarded for reasons never identified by the County. These can be easily cured given sufficient time.
- 9% of the signatures were invalidated due to a 2019 law that required submission of all signatures at the 45 day point. They believe these voters should be allowed to cure as the error was not their fault. These signatures could be curable.
- 35+ signatures were on the Washoe County list of registered voters given to the recall committee, but were rejected as if they were not on the list of registered voters.
- There are more than 60 signatures that were rejected for one trustee petition and with the same information valid for the other trustee petition! This clearly shows a break in process.
While some in the community might be tired of hearing the word “recall,” this is a critical moment in time as Trustees Dent and Schmitz have another year on their term, and seem focused on tearing IVGID apart. They both must be removed from office.
This is also not the first time Washoe County has been accused of errors and inconsistencies in their election processes, but the Committees to Recall Matt Dent and Sara Schmitz hope this will be the last.
The committees are currently weighing their decisions and would love to hear your thoughts on the next steps.
Also, if you would like to write your representative, you may do so by reaching out to:
- Cisco Aguilar: NV Secretary of State: sosmail@sos.nv.gov or by phone at 775-684-5708
- Alexis Hill, Washoe County Board Chairman: hill@washoecounty.gov or by phone at 775-447-3017
- Rich DeLong, State Assemblyman: rich.delong@asm.state.nv.us