Washoe County released news today that following weeks of signature verification, there ended up being 1,726 valid signatures in the Recall Petition of Matt Dent and 1,687 valid signatures in the Recall Petition of Sara Schmitz.
This is a far cry from the 2,140 signatures that were submitted for the Recall Petition of Matt Dent and the 2,216 for the Recall Petition of Sara Schmitz.
Each petition required a minimum of 1,801 valid signatures in order to move this to a recall election, so the the signature verification missed the mark by 75 votes and 114 votes, respectfully. A very close call, but in this race, close does not count.
Members in the community expressed feelings of elation as well as disappointment when the news was released this morning. While members of the anti-recall campaign celebrated, those who support the recall of Trustees Dent and Schmitz have many questions unanswered, namely:
- Number of signatures submitted to Washoe County for both Dent and Schmitz
- Number of signatures Washoe County shows were submitted for both Dent and Schmitz
- Number of signatures thrown out as ineligible for both Dent and Schmitz, along with the reasons they were ineligible
- Number of signatures that needed to be cured in total for both Dent and Schmitz
- Number of signatures that were cured in total for both Dent and Schmitz by the deadline of 10/20/23 at 5pm
- Number of signatures that were received to be cured after the 10/20/23 5pm deadline
The main complaint from the recall campaign is about the lack of an appropriate timeline given to “cure” specific signatures in order for them to be counted. As of Thursday, October 19th, there were 285 signatures that required affidavits to be signed, the majority of them were given less than a days notice.
Time will tell where this leads, but it was clear the recall campaign was successful in collecting enough signatures, but they may not have been successful in getting enough signatures verified.