Inexperience on the serpent's tongue
An odor of mendacity. A phrase I had never heard before and had to look up since we are being honest. In my simpler mind, words such as lying, dishonesty, and manipulation of the truth were always my vernacular to describe dishonesty. The phrase, which is lighting up blogs and news outlets this week, was plucked from a twenty-three-page decision in Georgia. This decision, in State of Georgia v Donald Trump et al, is one of the closest nationally followed legal matters in decades.
With a reference to the olfactory senses, mendacity in this use comes from the scene of a 1950s classic movie, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. Burl Ives, the Academy Award-winning actor, referred to mendacity in the movie by saying, “…there isn’t nothing more powerful than the odor of mendacity…you can smell it. It smells like death.”
Maybe he was right, because mendacity seems to come easily to the County when it comes to the Registrar of Voters (ROV), and the smell is permeating from here to Carson City.
Surely, our readers will recall the ups and downs of the Registrar of Votercat s in Washoe County. Since 2020, the office has been in what can only be described as perpetual turmoil. Despite the County’s consistent messaging and lack of interest in correcting the media regurg artists, the ROV does not appear to be suffering from an “attack on democracy”, instead it appears to have self-inflicted wounds from the embrace of the unqualified. As intoxicating as mendacity can be, it is no wonder the County can sleep after recklessly blaming outspoken critics and conspiracy theorists for every ill the ROV had.
In April 2022, ROV Deanna Spikula was on leave, the county withheld the reasoning. We only knew this after RGJ reporter Mark Robison probed the county about her return. She had been the ROV since 2017. Rumors circulated and Picon was told by an anonymous source that she was in some sort of a program, unrelated to her job at the ROV. Apparently her and Robison had heard the same rumors, as it would come up later in the year. Picon found, that between April 2022 and June 2022, not one email was sent by Spikula to Rodriguez. Spikula was not even copied on emails between commissioners and the manager over missing sample ballots. Where was she?
Fast-forward to June, following hiccups with ballot envelopes, Deanna Spikula was now apparently double-dipping. She had tendered her resignation with the County, and was under some contract with the Secretary of State. Meanwhile, she was advised by the Human Resources director to, “…fix your time to reflect the regular hours you used at the State” and “Also, moving forward, can you please let me know what hours you are working for the State so I can make sure your time card reflects the correct coding (i.e. regular hours versus vacation)?” Picon is unsure how an employee, being paid by the state, is entering regular hours for work she is not doing.
2022-06-22 2035 FW Deanna Letter by Picon Press Media LLC on Scribd
2022-06-22 1912 RE Deanna Letter by Picon Press Media LLC on Scribd
Picon is confused. ROV Spikula was reportedly absent from the workplace for what appeared to be 2 months, in the middle of the first election cycle since the contested results of 2020. Her office’s snafus included a “miscommunication with the vendor” that led to confusion with the mail-in ballots. Meanwhile, her departure was steeped with claims of death threats and other threats to democracy, none of which have been substantiated. Yet what we now know from public records, is that Deanna was doubly employed. She was apparently so valuable to the elections process, that she was being paid twice by taxpayers. Picon will ask the state for records, however, we have yet to get a timely or complete response from the state, may be the least transparent organization we have dealt with.
The irony is that somehow Ms. Spikula was so distraught over calls for clean voter rolls, a return to results on election night, and paper ballots, that she could not come to work, yet despite the claimed stress she simultaneously landed another gig doing election work, is quite shocking. What is even more shocking, the State brought her on, following the errors in Washoe County’s process and her track record of apparently being unable to report to work.
RGJ writer Mark Robison was light on facts when he penned his April 13, 2022, article about Deanna Spikula being on leave. He mysteriously left out any details that would support his headline, “…Deanna Spikula on indefinite leave amid threats to her office.” Instead, his article vaguely referred to claims by Jaime Rodriguez that “we have received threats” with zero specifics. Maybe that is because there were none?
In 2022, Clark County officials complained about the number of public records requests they had related to election matters. Picon assumes officials forgot they have generally refused to answer questions via email or during public comment. In fact, Washoe County proudly responds with verbiage such as, “We are not obligated to answer questions.” That seems rich coming from a citizen-funded representative government.
Later, in October 2022, the interim ROV, Jaime Rodriguez, failed to catch errors on ballots. The print-proofing error cost taxpayers nearly $180,000 to have them reprinted. And while the county spin-masters tried to blame the error on those evil paper ballots, we saw later that Rodriguez was taking full blame for some of the errors. Despite this maladministration, she was selected as the permanent ROV just two months later.
While the county refuses to disclose who the candidates were for the ROV job, we know Ms. Rodriguez had little experience in running elections and was probably considered a loyalist by County Manager Eric Brown, a trait that seems much weightier than actual bona fides. What Picon can confirm, Jaime was selected from an initial pool of 20 applicants, sixteen whom were external. When it came to selection time, only two candidates were interviewed.
Picon found emails from one candidate who had 20 years of election experience. He purported to be the HAVA Administrator for the State of Nevada. HAVA refers to the Help America Vote Act and the position is a direct report to the State of Nevada’s Deputy Secretary for Elections. Apparently, this man and Assistant County Manager Kate Thomas have a history according to the email. Despite what appear to be serious bona fides, Kate Thomas responded to Manager Brown, “I have information on this (it’s not favorable), thanks.” Manager Brown apparently spoke with Mark Wlaschin, Deputy Secretary of State for Elections, and sent this back to Ms. Thomas, “Good conversation with Mark. Let’s connect tomorrow. He agrees we need to consider “creative solutions.” We would LOVE to know what creativity was at work.
One might consider that Ms. Rodriguez was the likely selection, being she was the acting. That thought would be confirmed when we saw emails from Manager Brown laying out his roadmap on July 01, 2022, just weeks after Deanna tendered her resignation. “Can you suggest a starting compensation level if we offered Jaime,” Brown asked the Human Resources manager, on July 01. Mind you, Deanna was still on the payroll as the ROV through July 31, 2022, so the manager never eyed a competitive process to select the best. It seems clear, that his eyes were set on Rodriguez before Spikula packed her office, forcing these applicants to play the unwinnable game.
Would our readers believe it if we claimed that Eric Brown had Jaime Rodriguez retool the job specification sheet to suit her own experience and job history? Well, he did. On June 23, 2022, just hours after receiving Spikula’s resignation, the assistant to the manager asked Jaime Rodriguez to rework the job classification specification sheet, the document that identifies the minimum qualifications and desired attributes for a County job. The election had just been held, 9 days prior and the County had not even transmitted the report to the Secretary of State.
In what can only be described as a crescendo of drama surrounding the County, on June 21, 2022, Manager Eric Brown brought forth an agenda item that could be described as an attack on the 1st Amendment. This new initiative allows the Manager to decide if an employee can use up to $150,000 in county funds to defend themselves from disparagement. The genesis of this item is unknown however the discussion was rife with undertones of death threats to the ROV, threats we now know never occurred. We still do not have any evidence that Ms. Spikula’s departure was due to any heckling, harassment, or criticism of her performance. The county buried all that in confidential personnel files.
Despite a lack of journalistic verification, or vigor, outlets locally and nationally parroted the mendacity. They never bothered to ask the logical questions, namely because “death threats”
seemed to fit so well into their 24/7 push of “The Big Lie” claims, along with their coordinated attacks on anyone willing to stand up and question their government.
On July 31, 2022, Mark Robison from RGJ published a story following an interview with Ms. Spikula. In that interview, Ms. Spikula claimed she was only away from the ROV for 3 weeks, which is contrary to our information and to the emails we have reviewed. Ms. Spikula also addressed claims that she was in rehab, stating, “I'm not in rehab.” The article then goes on to claim she received death threats, yet her description of the alleged and unreported threats does not amount to a death threat. Picon especially enjoys the portion of the article where she is specifically asked by Robison what her future plans are, and she fails to address her concurrent employment by the Secretary of State.
Sadly, this same uninterested batch of reporters are still spreading misinformation and claiming threats to democracy every chance they get. Just last week, the Reno News and Review printed a “news” story propagating misinformation. Delany Uronen regurgitated mendacities about the decision of Spikula to resign, citing her resignation “over threats.” What was interesting, the article claims that with time and experience comes wisdom in the role of ROV. We wonder why Washoe County management was so opposed to a candidate with 20 years of experience from the State when they selected Ms. Rodriguez.
In another local article by the Nevada Independents Carly Sauvageau, reminiscent of the endless stories about Bidens ice cream proclivities, the new ROV in Washoe County was spotlit. This article intimates that Deanna Spikula left because of “The Big Lie” and it spends an inordinate amount of time writing about the new ROV’s ice cream love. Carry Ann Burgess was selected as the ROV, despite some questions as to her bona fides. The Nevada Indy article seems to give some credence to her time as an ice cream shop manager, yet never questioning her experience to tackle the job.
The Ice Cream shop Ms. Burgess managed
According to Linkedin, Ms. Burgess was a “senior manager” at the Ocean Isle Pier for 11 months. Several of the 11 months were during winter (off) season when the place is generally slow. She ran a small ice cream shop. Before that, her election experience as an “Elections Administrator” was in a township of 3,283 people, about the equivalent of Ely, Nevada. She did that for 5 years. For a little over one year, she was an elections administrator in Grand Rapids, a population of 45,000, for the county, or about the same population as Pahrump. Despite the relative difference in volume of work, Ms. Burgess quit after just over six years, citing stress.
Despite obvious disparities in her experience, when compared to our population, the article never bothers to question her qualifications, instead attacks Republicans. What Carly fails to address is Ms. Burgess’ relatively short tenure at these jobs and her most recent short-term stint as an employee in Douglas County, Nevada. Between April 2023 and August 2023, Carri-Ann Burgess was employed as the Election Administrator in Douglas County. The entire county has 49,872 people, again not a comparison to Washoe’s nearly 500,000. Why did she leave? If she was unable to handle the stress in a county of 49,000, how would she handle the stress here?
Picon would be remiss if we did not remind readers of Manager Eric Browns statement, “We need to revamp it, take it down to the studs and start over,” referring to the Washoe County election system. He made that comment last June and Jaime Rodriguez resigned 6 months later. Ms. Burgess served as the interim until the county commission selected her as the acting ROV in February. We wonder what part of the system has been examined, let alone torn down and rebuilt.
In the end, the County gladly spent $600,000 tax-payer dollars to learn what anyone with executive experience could have told them. The ROV office lacked institutional knowledge which led to poor training, little or no policy to follow, errors in work product, high turnover, and a lack of trust from the public. And what is the county response, they doubled down and hired an interim ROV with less experience than Deanna Spikula had, however, she loves ice cream.