We're gonna wait another minute for Francis to join us, and then we'll get started.

The June eighteenth, twenty twenty-six meeting of the special city council is called to order.

These proceedings are being video recorded and can be viewed live on City of Las Vegas TV on Cox Cable Channel Two.

You could also watch the meeting live online and access other city content by visiting Las Vegas Nevada.gov slash connect.

For public comment related to the items on the agenda, citizen participation and public hearing items, we have available a speaker card that you can complete and submit to the city clerk.

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Before we proceed, will everyone rise for the pledge of allegiance?

I am gonna ask the youth mayor to please lead us in the pledge of allegiance.

Will you step forward?

Would you state your name first?

Sophia Schaeffer.

And you are youth mayor of what?

Clark County.

All right.

All right, please lead us in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Agenda item number four.

Public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters on the agenda for action.

The amount of time any single speaker is allowed may be limited.

Please say which agenda item you will be speaking about.

All comments made will be cross-referenced to those specific items.

If anyone submitted a speaker card or who wishes to speak under this portion of the agenda, please come to the podium.

State your name for the record.

This is your opportunity to address the council, but the council is not able to respond or engage in dialogue.

You may also address the council at the end of the meeting during citizen participation regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the city council.

Although you are not permitted from prohibited from speaking during both public comment periods, we kindly ask that your comments are not repetitive.

We will set the time at two million two minutes, not two million minutes, two minutes.

Does anybody wish to come forward?

Seeing no one, we will now move on to agenda item number five.

Discussion for possible action regarding the certification of canvas election returns for the June 9th, 2026 municipal primary elections.

Dr.

Holmes.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Dr.

Luann Holmes.

I'm the city clerk for the city of Las Vegas, and I am submitting for your acceptance and certification the campus results for the 2026 primary municipal election.

For the 2026 primary election, there was an active voter registration of 419,556 voters.

We had a total turnout of 76,856 ballots cast, which results in an 18.32% turnout.

Of those who participated, is it echoing to more than me?

I beg your pardon.

No, we're not hearing a little bit.

Of all those who participated, 43,889 or 10.56% voted by mail ballot.

18,351 or 4.37% voted during the early voting period, and 14,497 or about 3.46% took advantage of one of our many vote centers that were available to our citizens throughout all of Clark County on election day.

The register of voters identified 15 discrepancies.

That's one five discrepancies in the 76,856 ballots cast.

Three voters fled the voting machines prior to casting their ballots.

And there were two reactivation errors.

However, there were no tabulation errors in the 236 precincts in the primary.

128 provisional ballots were cast during the election.

119 were verified and counted.

Nine were not accepted.

Audits were performed in accordance with NRS 293B.

And as a member of the accuracy certification board, I can attest that we certified the functionality of the tabulation system, including the mail readers, the ballot marking devices, and the agillus mail ballot processing machine.

All systems were found to be 100% accurate in tabulation of the votes and processing of mail ballots.

These tests were performed before the start of early voting on the day before election day and a post-election test the day after the election.

We received the campus results from Clark County Election Department late yesterday evening.

And as the duly appointed election official for the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, it's my honor to submit for your consideration the outcome of the 2026 primary municipal election.

I respectfully request your acceptance and certification of these results, which reflect the voice of your constituents and uphold the integrity of our electoral process.

I can answer any questions that you have.

Thank you.

Are there any questions or comments from members of the council?

Miss Summers Armstrong.

Okay.

Yes, Miss Kelly.

Thank you, Mayor.

Having it be my first election to listen to the certification.

I am very impressed with what I'm interpreting as a whole lot of work on you and your team's part to ensure the integrity of the election.

Might you just in and very briefly share with me your auditing, not the steps per se, but but the process that you go through so that others who may be listening today or in the audience, and if it's their first time, have an appreciation as well.

Sure, absolutely.

The accuracy certification board.

Um actually all city clerks that are involved in Clark County and the election department, we all do this together.

It's performed out at the election department.

Um I'm sorry, my name's Luann Holmes for the record.

And uh what's really nice about the process is you do it three times, and what it's doing is you're trying to consistently replicate the same results.

So we work with dummy data, and what we're testing is not only the integrity of the equipment that they use for everything from sorting ballots to reading, um reading ballots, all the equipment, but we're also certifying that none of the hash calcs, which is um a timestamp or sort of an electronic signature on software to make sure that the software isn't changed.

Um we're really making sure that that process stays uh intricately the same for three tests.

We test it about a few days before early voting, we test it the day before election, and then we close it out the day after election, we do the test again.

If there was any sort of problem where the equipment had been altered with or the data had been, you know, uh misaligned, we'd be able to find it in that testing.

I appreciate uh the explanation.

I know, Dr.

Holmes, that you and your team are often um uh you know seen as the rulemakers, and we see your signature on important documents and those things, but I'd like to suggest that you and your team are one of the most important functions of city government.

And uh, if you if you ever feel unappreciated, I'm certain that uh it it you know, this will be a quick meeting, there may not be anything in the newspaper because until there's problems, no one worries.

But you're making sure and your team are making sure there aren't problems and that there are you're doing things according to not only Nevada revived statutes, but um the that ethically you're doing things the way that they need to be done with the integrity so that we are uh feeling very confident in a free and fair election.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Uh yes, Ms.

Diaz, and thank you, Miss Kelly.

I appreciated your question.

Yeah.

Uh thank you to councilwoman Kelly and Dr.

Holmes.

I know that we've updated our system somewhat for this electoral cycle.

Um, what was new to me voting in person was seeing my ballot completely print in front of me and having it to hand carry and get scanned.

Um, did that change in process also accelerate how expediently we were able to tabulate and count votes and and can you I guess speak about the efficiencies that the change in system has hopefully created for the voting process?

So we won't be able to see that um really tell what the change in efficiencies are until we get to the general.

So we have at least two elections to really take a look at that data.

But I can tell you just from initial um results, it did speed up the process and then made it um not just a little more accessible to people, but I think it helped kind of uh stifle some of the fears of uh if I don't put my ballot in that scanner to be counted, what if something happens to it?

Or what if the paper roll that we used to have in the past, you know, isn't up to date.

And I think um bringing the voter more into that role and and being able to see the processes as they roll out, I think is a huge benefit for the voters.

But on the processing side, I really do think that we're gonna be able to get our data quicker.

Um we won't be having to wait that full 10 days to do our canvas, and the results get back out to the public quicker, which is really nice.

Um, if you looked at the stats, I put up some of um the results throughout the last two weeks and from election day until now.

And one of the things that I saw was uh it wasn't just Clark County, it was all the counties in Nevada were able to post results quicker.

They were they are able to have um really detailed account for what's still outstanding, how did people vote?

And that's really what the public I think wants to know.

You know, we don't have the winners at election evening.

I totally get that.

But they do want to know like tell us what the progress is and how valid is that progress.

I look forward to seeing uh if there's more telling information in the November elections.

Me too.

I know all usually most of the nation is waiting for Nevada's numbers to get tabulated to determine racism, so it'll be nice to hopefully have that uh you know expeditiously accounted for.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

Yes, and Ms.

Armstrong.

Thank you.

Uh you were speaking clearly, but I wasn't hearing clearly earlier, and you had given some uh some data points, and you had spoken about the number of at the very beginning.

You talked about three, the number was three, and I missed it.

I I didn't um before early voting.

I was talking about the 15 discrepancies.

No, but I think the 18 percent and how it broke down, 10 percent male mail in.

Yeah, so if you could just kind of go back just to the first part of your of your data.

So we had 76,856 ballots casted, um, and that's a turnout of about 18.32 percent.

And then of those ballots that were cast, 43,889, which is about 10 and a half percent, were by mail ballot.

18,351 or 4.37 voted during early vote, and 14,497 voted, uh, which is about that 3.46 percent took advantage of voting on election day at one of the centers.

Thank you.

That was the piece.

Thank you.

Um, let me uh thank you and congratulate you for the extraordinary work that you do.

And uh probably what I'm gonna ask now would be best discussed over a cup of coffee.

But uh the frustration I have is the lack of participation in our voting process when you have 18 percent of those that are eligible to vote actually show up to vote, where in Nevada it is so easy between mail in ballots and early voting all over the community, and then election day voting, which is all over the community.

I don't know what more you could have done, and that means the city you had party uh voting parties and everything else that you could possibly think of in order to encourage people to come out and vote.

Is there anything that we are missing here that the city could be doing to encourage people to exercise the most sacred right of being an American citizen, and that is voting for your elected officials?

Absolutely, and that's part of we have a pretty um strong civic engagement and voter education program that we've implemented.

We have great community partners.

Um as you saw the raiders came down.

Um we're looking at partnering with not only nonprofits to help get the word out, we offer um voter registration drives, which I've talked to councilwoman Kelly at length about.

Um, and then we have partnerships with like UNLV.

I was super excited to see that UNLV is coming right across the street because um we've partnered a lot with them about getting the young voters educated.

Um I know that in my era I learned a lot about civic engagement from my parents, but that's not necessarily strong in the school systems now, and so we've even created a couple programs in um Lance Downs Cummington from our office has actually got to go out to a couple of the different high schools and implement that and talk to them about why the local uh legislative process is really the closest to the people and why it's important that you know not only who to vote for, like who's available in where do you live, but what is that do for you?

How does it help build community?

So we will I would love to sit down over coffee and we'll talk about, but yes, we could we can even do more.

Well, I thank you so much for everything that you did to uh to give us the uh the sense that we have a free and fair election in this community, it's very very important.

And with that, Mayor Pro Tem, may I have a motion?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

It's uh great pride I will move to approve.

Please vote.

Post motion carries.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Holmes.

Thank you.

Agenda item number six, citizen participation.

Public comment during this portion of the agenda must be limited to matters within the jurisdiction of the city council.

No subject may be acted upon by the city council unless that subject is on the agenda and is scheduled for action.

If you wish to be heard, come to the podium, give your name for the record.

The amount of discussion on any single subject will be limited to two minutes.

This is your opportunity to address the council, but as you are aware, the council is not able to respond or engage in dialogue.

Are there any members of the public who wish to speak under this portion of the agenda?

Seeing and hearing none, this special city council meeting is adjourned.