Ross Miller
Friday, Dec. 11, 2020 | 6:10 p.m.
Ross Miller held onto, and widened, his victory in the recount of his razor-thin race for Clark County Commission while his opponent, Stavros Anthony, vowed to continue the fight.
A county spokesman said Friday afternoon after counting concluded that the results increased Miller’s margin of victory in the District C race from 10 to 30 votes. The hand recount started on Monday.
Democrat Miller, a former Nevada secretary of state, came out of the recount with 76,633 votes. Republican Anthony, a Las Vegas city councilman, finished the recount with 76,603 votes.
“I’d like to extend my deepest gratitude to the staff and volunteers who worked 18-hour days in the middle of a pandemic to uphold my victory,” Miller said in a tweet. “Now, I’m focused on getting to work speeding our recovery from COVID and assisting to restore our economy.”
The difference is the result of 74 additional votes in the recount, said Clark County spokesman Dan Kulin, although he didn't have an immediate further explanation.
“We are in the process of reviewing our documentation to find an explanation for this difference,” Kulin said in an email. “However, this will be a labor-intensive process that will not be completed today.”
Anthony filed for the recount last week after the commission certified the results for Miller after considering, then veering away from, calling for a special election to clarify the will of the northwest valley district’s voters in the extraordinarily close race — Anthony’s first preference as results showed him losing by fewer votes than there were unspecified “discrepancies” in the race. Election officials said there were 139 discrepancies, potentially casting doubt on the results.
The initial results were 76,586 votes for Miller to Anthony’s 76,576.
Anthony said Friday that he was disturbed that 74 more votes cropped up, along with the 139 discrepancies “that are not going away that cloud this election.”
“We shouldn’t be finding new ballots in an election 45 days after the election is over and still having a Clark County Commission that certifies the election as accurate,” he said.
The commission is scheduled to certify the results of the recount on Tuesday.
Anthony, however, had several potential next steps mapped out.
The Anthony camp planned to review 170 ballots they challenged during the recount with election officials on Saturday. He is also going forward with a hearing set for this month in a pending lawsuit that could force the commission to call for a special election.
If the judge does not rule in his favor, Anthony said he will take the matter to the Nevada Supreme Court.
Miller filed the lawsuit in November to compel the commission to certify the election in his favor after their initial delay to undertake further investigation. Anthony joined in as an interested party.
“You would think that the Clark County Commission would see that this election keeps changing, so they should do the right thing and order a special election to resolve this instead of certifying an election that changes every week,” Anthony said. “I don't understand how the county commission can, in their own minds, certify an election that’s always changing.”
Miller and Anthony are vying to fill the seat about to be vacated by termed-out Larry Brown.
