Horse Chosen for State Quarter Design

Horses win quarter final

A design featuring wild horses galloped across the finish line in
balloting for the official state quarter design early Thursday.

The design, which garnered a total of 18,900 of the 60,000 votes cast,
features three wild horses galloping in sagebrush in front of a
mountain sunrise along with Nevada's nickname, "The Silver State."

The design was one among three in serious contention during the
month-long contest, beating out portraits of a Comstock-era miner and a big
horn sheep.

State Treasurer Brian Krolicki said that while the miner and the sheep
actually held the lead for a good deal of the contest, the wild horses
turned out to be closers.

The quarter will be Nevada's addition to the U.S. Mint's popular 50
State Quarters Program and will be introduced into circulation in January
2006.

State Treasurer Brian K. Krolicki said nearly 60,000 votes were cast in
the contest, noting the high voter turnout among school children.

"Most people voted online," he said, while estimating that about 1/4 of
the votes came from young people, many of whose teachers had embraced
the quarter contest and made it into a class project.

"Clearly it was the kids who pushed it (the winning design) through,"
said Krolicki.

"The very people who don't normally get to vote in elections."

Children like his own 6-year-old daughter, Kate, who unveiled the
winning design.

"She's been a strong lobbyist for the horses since the contest began,"
he said.

The two other designs, "Battle Born Nevada" and "Nevada's Early
Heritage," received 9,600 and 2,400 votes respectively.

Web master Tony Marcin was tasked with checking Internet protocol
addresses to ensure there were no voter irregularities. He said he didn't
have to discount a single vote.

"Whenever we got a lot of votes from the same IP address, we checked
them out and traced the addresses back to schools," he said.

Krolicki thanked the advisory committee and the county treasurers for
their hard work in promoting the event and "to all those who
participated in choosing this powerful image of Nevada that will soon be depicted
on this nation's coinage."

Krolicki said he was pleased with the number of votes cast.

Nevada's quarter will be the third with an equine theme, joining
Delaware and Kentucky.

The quarter comes at the same time as the issues of mustang advocacy
and rights lay heavily on the news.

Half the nation's wild horses reside in Nevada.

Asked if he thought Nevada's would be the luckiest of all the state
quarters, Krolicki didn't hesitate.

"Absolutely," he said.