Assembly District 40 candidate Gary Schmidt said Thursday he isn’t involved in gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert’s statewide primary recount effort.
Gilbert has demanded a full recount in all 17 counties, refusing to concede that Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo won the Republican primary by 11 percentage points.
Schmidt said he was involved but that he, “withdrew from that in 24 hours.”
“It no longer seemed necessary for me to participate directly because at the time, they were only talking about Washoe and Clark,” he said, adding that just 20 percent of his electorate in Assembly 40 is in Washoe County.
He said the recount would have had to flip nearly all those ballots to give him a victory over P.K. O’Neill so he isn’t challenging that result.
Schmidt won in Storey County but lost in Washoe and Carson City in the GOP primary June 14.
He said he may be involved as a witness if the issue gets to court because of the number of people he saw coming out of the polling place upset that they had been changed to non-partisan by DMV officials. Under a new state law, people who went to DMV to renew a license but failed to affirm their party registration were automatically listed as non-partisan. Schmidt said that apparently happened to about 44,000 voters.
But beyond that, he said he isn’t involved in Gilbert’s challenge.
Schmidt said he has questions about whether Nevada’s election results are accurate — especially in the 16 counties using Dominion machines.
“It’s impossible to certify an election in this state, period,” he said.
He said he has more faith in the machines Carson City is using because they don’t connect to the internet and they produce a paper copy of each voter’s ballot.
He said he was headed to Carson City to observe the recount process at the clerk’s office.
