On Tuesday, Nye County in southern Nevada approved an interim county clerk to oversee the 2022 general election. Mark Kampf was appointed by the Nye County Commission in a 4-1 vote to complete the term of Sandra “Sam” Merlino, who resigned after the commission voted to ditch electronic machines and moved to hand counting with paper ballots. Merlino had served as clerk for more than two decades, since January of 2000. Kampf has said he plans to use a “parallel process” of both hand counting and electronic tabulating of ballots.
Nevadans will tell you Nye County is kind of weird. It is the third largest county in the country geographically, with a military Veteran population of over 15 percent. They have done stranger things than cancel voting machines — they once elected a brothel owner, Dennis Hof, to the state assembly weeks after he had died.
Kampf is on the November ballot as the Republican nominee for county clerk, winning his primary with more than 48 percent of the vote. While running his primary race, he served as temporary county Treasurer, a position he resigned to be considered for appointment to the clerk’s office. Kampf faces just one nonpartisan opponent in the general election, whom he is favored to beat easily in the staunchly red county.
At least seven rural and Republican-leaning counties in Nevada considered returning to paper ballots and hand counts following the 2020 election. Washoe, the state’s second most populous county, voted down a resolution after a seven-hour marathon hearing in March. That resolution included stationing Nevada National Guard at each polling location. Lawsuits from the ACLU of Nevada were anticipated had the resolution been approved.