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A petition to recall Nye County Commissioner Peter Liakopoulos was turned in Monday with 772 declared signatures, 102 more than necessary.

However, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.

The petition will undergo intense scrutiny by the county clerk's office, and Liakopoulos himself, to verify those signing the petition are registered voters in District 5, before a recall election would be scheduled.

The deadline for submitting the signatures was Wednesday, 90 days after Elliott Brainard, Jeanette Smith and Sam Stroffe-Rains filed a notice of intent to recall him.

"We currently are looking over the signatures and reviewing them for their authenticity. The way the system works, I'm sure everything will come out just fine," Liakopoulos said confidently.

The 670 required signatures represent 25 percent of the people in that district who voted in the last election Nov. 7, 2006.

"Personally from what I've seen, the way it was done, unless there were extraordinary circumstances, everything was done in a proper and correct way," countered Bill Garlough, a supporter of the recall effort.

Garlough sought to dispel feelings the recall was instigated after Liakopoulos was arrested on bribery charges Dec. 20. The recall began 80 days before that, he said.

"We had enough signatures before he was arrested," Garlough said.

Garlough's wife Pat will be a candidate for that county commission position, if Liakopoulos is recalled. Pat Garlough lost to Liakopoulos by 13 votes in the Aug. 15, 2006 primary.

County Clerk Sam Merlino said her office has four working days to do a raw count of the signatures, merely counting them without analyzing them. That deadline is Monday. That raw count is then reported to the Nevada Secretary of State's office, which will then give the county clerk's office notice to begin verifying the signatures. Merlino said the secretary of state's office typically takes a day or two to inform the county clerk to do the verification.

The county clerk's office will then have nine working days to verify either a minimum of 500 signatures or 5 percent of the signatures on the petition. Merlino said she expects her office will be asked to verify 500 signatures. That would probably be completed about the period of Jan. 22-23.

If the county clerk's office is only able to verify 90 percent are valid signatures, the secretary of state's office can ask the county clerk to do a full verification of all signatures, for which they have another 12 days, Merlino said.

The secretary of state will then inform the county clerk's office whether it's a valid recall petition. If so, the county clerk's office will be instructed to call an election within 10 to 20 days of that notice. The election would have to be held within 30 days of when it's called by the county clerk's office.

The earliest a recall election could be held, in a best case scenario, would probably be late February.

Merlino said she came up with a preliminary raw count of 746 signatures, not the 772 declared by the petitioners.

"All we do is we actually count the signatures on the petition. That's all it is. Normally it's fairly close to what they individuals say they submitted, but on occasion they miscount by a few," Merlino said in describing the raw count.

When it comes time to verify signatures, names will be checked against voter registration forms, Merlino said. She said only the county clerk's office has the voter registration lists.

Merlino did confirm Liakopoulos asked for and received a copy of the recall petitions.

The county clerk, who supervised the last successful recall election against former Nye County Public Administrator Robert "Red" Dyer four months after she took office in 2000, said her staff will be avoiding making any public comments, to avoid the intense political battle associated with a recall.

"We're just going to go step by step according to the law," Merlino said.

An analysis of the petitions obtained by the Pahrump Valley Times shows some errors that could open up the recall to legal challenges.

Five people who circulated petitions lumped their signatures together and filed sworn statements they circulated those petitions. A raw count by the Pahrump Valley Times turned up 757 signatures.

Ninety-nine signatures turned in by Elliott Brainard includes a page containing two signatures on a nominating petition for Pat Garlough. Nevada Revised Statute 306.110 requires recall petitions and nominating petitions to be circulated separately.

Brainerd's signature also appears twice on the petition.

Other petitioners who signed sworn statements included David Wood, who turned in 119 signatures. Harley Kulkin turned in 258 signatures but included three pages of the petition twice in the packet submitted to the county clerk's office.

Pat Garlough herself turned in 148 signatures. Earline Heard filed a petition with 133 signatures. Both Garlough and Heard signed the petition twice.

Among other possible discrepancies noticed in the newspaper's critique, former Pahrump Town Board member Jeanna Howard signed the petition, listing an address on Idlewild Street that suffered heavy fire damage last spring.

One person who signed the petition lists an address on West Bell Vista Avenue, well north of Liakopoulos' district. Steve Johnson, who filed an ethics complaint against Liakopoulos last year, signed the petition listing an address on Wilson Road, also outside district five.

People circulating the petition solicited signatures at the Pahrump Fall Festival, where some people may have signed who weren't residents of the district. Petition organizers also had a stand set up across from Terrible's Lakeside Casino on Thousandaire Boulevard and Homestead Road on a few weekends.

Supporters also went door-to-door soliciting signatures, which is evident as some streets have a number of signatures on the same day, like 11 collected on Grain Mill Road Nov. 14 and eight on Graystone Drive Nov. 18.

The handwriting on several pages of the petition also appears to be very similar.