Recall petitions against Nevada state senators ruled invalid

Recall opponents Joyce Woodhouse, center, and Nicole Cannizzaro, right, listen as attorney Marc Elias argues whether it is constitutional to allow people to have their names removed from a recall petition on Wednesday, February 7, 2018. A judge on Wednesday, April 18, 2018, ruled the petitions are invalid due to a lack of signatures. (Michael Quine/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @Vegas88s

Eight months after a GOP-backed effort was launched to recall two Democratic state senators, a judge on Wednesday ruled that the petitions are invalid due to a lack of signatures.

The District Court decision ends the possibility of a recall election against Sens. Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, and Joyce Woodhouse, D-Henderson, unless recall backers appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court within 30 days.

Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson, a leader of the recall effort, could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday. But an attorney representing the recall organizers said an appeal remained possible.

Cannizzaro and Woodhouse expressed relief outside the courtroom and vowed to author a bill to tighten state laws related to recalls. The lawmakers want to revise the signature-gathering process and require a legitimate reason such as official wrongdoing for launching a recall petition.

“We’re really grateful that today justice feels like it was served and we’re not going to have recall elections,” Cannizzaro said. “If you followed this case, the signatures were gathered through any means of deception or intense pressure on voters at their doors. That’s not how we should be doing things in Nevada.”

County elections office faulted

Wednesday’s decision by District Judge Jerry A. Wiese came after he blasted the county elections office for not providing accurate information about the number of verified signatures on each petition.

William Rogers, a representative of Advanced Micro Targeting, the firm that gathered the signatures, submitted a declaration Tuesday identifying errors in the signature count. As a result of the review, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria amended the results in the Woodhouse recall — verifying another 175 petition signatures but still leaving it 21 short of triggering a recall election.

“I don’t know who it is that counts the votes and verifies the signatures or what they do over there, but I can’t believe that they can’t give me a firm number,” Wiese said after the tally was changed. “That’s really troubling to me. … I don’t know how we can have confidence in numbers when they keep changing.”

The judge initially signaled support for an evidentiary hearing to examine the questionable signatures, but abandoned the idea after realizing that the petitions would still fall short of the required threshold even if all were accepted. Nevada state law requires signatures from 25 percent of voters who cast a ballot in the district’s last election to initiate a recall election.

Appeal possible

Daniel Stewart, an attorney with Hutchison and Steffen representing recall organizers, said the Woodhouse petition could still qualify through the challenge of additional signatures not yet before the court, adding “there’s a chance” his clients might appeal the ruling.

“At this point they’ll consider all their options once they get the (court) order,” Stewart said. “There’s a lot of things that go into that decision — costs, timing, chances of success. That’ll be for them to look at and decide.”

Woodhouse, who’s termed out of the Nevada Senate in 2020, said she’s not worried about a possible appeal. The veteran legislator said the recalls were entirely motivated by the Republicans’ push to recapture the Senate majority they lost in 2016. Democrats control the Senate by a 12-to-9 majority, counting nonpartisan members who caucus with Democrats.

“It was reprehensible, it was ridiculous and it was just a miscarriage of justice and the democratic process,” Woodhouse said. “I think they had two females that were strong in the Nevada state Legislature and if they can get rid of us, then they can do other things that are inappropriate as well.”

Contact Ramona Giwargis at rgiwargis@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4538. Follow @RamonaGiwargis on Twitter.