While first place finisher in the Reno Ward 1 Council primary race Kathleen Taylor is sending new text messages to would be November voters, and locals on social media are calling on voters to choose second place finisher Frank Perez to oust an incumbent who was initially selected to become a seat holder, the third place finisher in the race by just 15 votes Lily Baran is preparing to officially ask for a hand recount, trying to finish up getting money for the effort she needs to pay for herself, expected to be in the five figure territory.
The deadline to ask for such a recount is Wednesday.
“This is a rare instance where a hand recount is something you would want to do,” Baran said today. “ We should do our due diligence to count everybody who voted at all. At this point, all the votes are in the building. Let’s just count them all,” she said.
Final released tallies in percentages had Taylor at 29.13%, Perez at 24.10% and Baran at 23.67%.
Baran is hoping this race and others will get Nevada to eventually join two dozen other states and Washington D.C. in automatically triggering recounts for razor thin margins. She sees it as a disadvantage to grassroots candidates as herself, also pointing out that Black women candidates as a demographic have the biggest challenges in receiving fundraising support.
According to Ballotpedia, “Nevada allows any candidate defeated at any election to request a recount…The deadline to request a recount is no later than three business days after the canvass of the vote. Each recount must begin within five days after the request and must be completed no later than five days after its start. The requester is responsible for costs associated with the recount unless the recount changes the election outcome in his or her favor, in which case the requester is refunded any costs paid. If the recount does not change the election outcome, the requester may receive a refund if the costs paid were greater than the cost of the recount.”
We asked the county’s communications director Bethany Drysdale to confirm this and the exact price point to which she responded “the cost is based on the number of ballots to be recounted. So a recount for a statewide office – senator, for example – would cost a lot more than a recount for a local and small-district office. For example, Joey Gilbert requested a recount for the gubernatorial primary in 2022 at a cost of $84,000. The Registrar of Voters would need to look at how many ballots were cast in Reno Ward 1, and then provide an estimate based on that. “
Baran said she’s heard from several people that even though they thought they had voted accurately, when they checked, their ballots had not been counted.
In one instance she says two friends voted at the same time for her, and made a video, dropping their ballots at the same time on June 8th, and only one of the two had their vote counted.
Baran also said mail-in voting is great, but that with voter rolls slow to update, many renters who move never get that option. She’s asking for people who did vote to check if their vote was counted and let her know if it wasn’t.