Anthony asked for a recount. Miller’s lead only grew.

A weeklong recount expanded Democrat Ross Miller’s lead to 30 votes over rival Republican Las Vegas Councilman Stavros Anthony for a seat on the Clark County Commission, an official said Friday.

The outcome in the District C race would appear to leave Anthony with just one remaining option: contesting the election in court. But the results will not be official until certified, which the commission is expected to consider doing on Tuesday.

Miller’s margin of victory after the initial count was just 10 votes. It increased to 30 after county election department staff spent five days painstakingly recounting more than 153,000 votes in the race, finishing on Friday, according to county spokesman Dan Kulin.

Anthony, who is term-limited on the City Council, paid nearly $80,000 to have the result reexamined.

And the effort is not quite over: Miller’s extended lead came as 74 more votes were tallied in the recount than in the initial count, according to Kulin.

“We are in the process of reviewing our documentation to find an explanation for this difference,” he said in a statement. “However, this will be a labor-intensive process that will not be completed today.”

While Miller signaled a readiness to move on, Anthony pledged to continue to fight.

Candidates react

“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 statement. “Now, I’m focused on getting to work speeding our recovery from Covid and assisting my new colleagues in their vital efforts to restore our economy.”

But Anthony noted that the results were still unofficial. The campaign planned to be at the county Election Department warehouse on Saturday participating in the process to determine where the 74 additional ballots were derived, he said.

And there were more than 200 adjudicated ballots that still needed to be reconciled, according to Anthony.

“Our fight in this race is not over,” he said in a statement. “We have 139 discrepancies that still exist and this additional fluctuation in ballots, only supports the fact that we need a new election.”

Race marked by discrepancies

Anthony officially filed for a recount on Dec. 3, following the narrow loss to Miller, a former secretary of state, in a race that was marked by the election department’s findings of 139 voting discrepancies.

While common in elections, the discrepancies in the contest exceeded the slim margin of victory, casting doubt over the validity of the outcome and initially leading the county commission to decline certifying the results and consider a special election.

Miller sued county lawmakers over the move, saying they had gone beyond their constitutional authority. And once it became clear that the commission would reconsider certification, Anthony sought an injunction to prevent the board from doing so.

But a county district court judge disagreed with Anthony’s premise that the discrepancies had “prevented” the election — the standard in state statute to launch a revote. Deferring to that court ruling, the commission agreed to certify the race after all and allow the legal system to handle any disputes.

Similarities to 2009 council race

Anthony, a retired Metropolitan Police Department captain, won his first election to the City Council in 2009 by just 10 votes. His victory over Glenn Trowbridge, a former county department head, was confirmed following a recount.

In contrast to the much larger commission district, however, only 6,600 votes were cast in that council race for Ward 4.

There are other similarities: Miller’s campaign manager this year, Jim Ferrence, served in that same capacity for Trowbridge in the 2009 City Council race. And Anthony in 2009 was seeking the seat held by then-Councilman Larry Brown, who’d been elected to the county commission that year. Anthony and Miller were seeking this year to replace Brown on the county commission, where he faced term limits.

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.