In Nevada election quirk, high card draw breaks tie in rural Washoe County trustee contest
RENO, Nev. (News 4 & Fox 11) — In a quintessentially Nevada election law quirk, the winner of an election for trustee of the Gerlach General Improvement District was determined by a high-card draw by the candidates Wednesday morning.
In a special proceeding held at the Washoe County complex, trustee candidates Carl Copek and Seth Schrenzel, who both received 67 votes and tied for third in the 2024 election, selected one card from a shuffled deck.
In Nevada election quirk, high card draw breaks tie in rural Washoe County trustee contest
Following a coin toss to determine the picking order, Washoe County registrar of voters Andrew McDonald opened a new deck of cards and fanned them out across a table.
Schrenzel drew a 7 and Copek drew a 5, meaning Schrenzel had the highest card and was declared the winner.
In an interview following the brief process, the men, who have been friends for many years, said they wouldn’t have missed it.
“This is an exercise in democracy that we wouldn’t miss,” Copek said.
“The tie had to be broken. It had to. This is a legal question that needed to get solved and this is how we solve it in Nevada,” Schrenzel said.
McDonald said it was the first election tie in Washoe County since 2018. However in that year, one of the candidates didn’t show up to the tiebreaking ceremony, so the candidate who showed was declared the winner by default.
The last Washoe County election to be broken by a high-card draw was nearly 20 years ago, McDonald said.
Every single vote matters and we count every validly cast ballot here in Washoe County.
“67 votes. It’s a low number, but there’s only 151 active registered voters in that district … so if more voters would have turned out, it may not have been a tie,” McDonald.
The Gerlach General Improvement District, which governs the rural northern Nevada town south of the Black Rock Desert, had four open seats in the 2024 election. Both Copek and Schrenzel have served in the position since the election, but the tiebreaker was necessary to determine who will serve the full four-year term.
Schrenzel will now serve the full term, which runs through 2028, and Copek will serve the remainder of a partial term, which runs through 2026.
The Nevada Revised Statutes stipulate that the winner of many tied elections be decided by ‘lot.’ However, in the event of a tie in a statewide general election, the winner would be chosen by a joint vote of both houses of the Nevada legislature.
Email reporter Ben Margiott at bjmargiott@sbgtv.com. Follow @BenMargiott on X and Ben Margiott KRNV on Facebook.
