Early voting turnout light for municipal elections

By Conor Shine

Monday, March 30, 2015 | 2:18 p.m.

In more than a week of early voting, just more than 17,500 people have cast ballots in municipal elections in Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson, a paltry turnout of just 4.2 percent of active registered voters.

That’s not unusual for municipal elections, where only about 10 to 20 percent of the electorate typically votes.

The low turnout means several city council races will likely be decided by only a few hundred votes, cracking the door for challengers looking to unseat better-funded incumbents and potentially continuing an anti-incumbency trend that began in last fall’s state elections.

The races are nonpartisan and so far, Democrats and Republicans have turned out in nearly equal numbers.

The most ballots cast have been in Las Vegas, where a mayoral bout between incumbent Carolyn Goodman and challenger City Councilman Stavros Anthony is stoking interest, drawing 10,661 voters to the polls through Wednesday.

That includes 4,115 votes cast in Ward 4, Anthony’s home turf and a needed base of support for his bid to unseat Goodman, who’s seeking a second term following a 12-year tenure by her husband and former Mayor Oscar Goodman.

Sun City Summerlin, a retirement community in Ward 4, had an early voting polling site located there over the weekend, helping drive up turnout in the area. The rotating polling sites will travel to other wards throughout this week, evening some of the difference in turnout between the various wards.

The second most votes in Las Vegas — 1,798 — were cast in Ward 2, which is represented by Councilman Bob Beers, who is not on this year’s ballot.

Beers was a key ally of Anthony’s in blocking public funding for a proposed $200 million downtown soccer stadium, which has been the defining issue so far of the mayoral race.

Goodman was a vocal advocate for the project, which was scrapped after Major League Soccer announced in February it would not bring an expansion franchise to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas features three other City Council races on April’s primary ballot, but so far there doesn’t seem to be much interest among voters.

In Ward 3, where stadium supporter Councilman Bob Coffin is fending off a field of five challengers, only 727 votes were cast through Wednesday.

In Ward 5, Councilman Ricki Barlow is facing challenger Randy Voyard, who ran for the seat in 2011 and lost with 9 percent of the vote. So far, 1,441 votes have been cast in that race.

A total of 1,395 votes have been cast in Ward 1, where Councilwoman Lois Tarkanian is seeking a third term and facing a challenge from Raymond Fletcher.

Turnout also has been low in North Las Vegas, where only 1,901 votes have been cast in a pair of City Council races. That’s 4.1 percent of the registered voters eligible to vote in those races.

In Henderson, where residents can vote on each of the three City Council races, regardless of which ward they live in, a total of 5,017 votes have been cast — 3.7 percent of the city’s registered voters.

Early voting for the primary election closes Friday. The primary election is April 7, with the general election on June 2.

Any candidate who captures more than 50 percent of the vote in the primary will win the race outright and not have to compete in the general election.