Las Vegas voters line up Feb. 23, 2016, to attend a Republican Party caucus at Western High School in Las Vegas. The Nevada Republican Party is eschewing the state’s Republican presidential preference primary election set for Feb. 6 in favor of conducting its own presidential caucuses, like this one eight years ago. But just weeks before the Feb. 8 caucuses, Clark County School District administrators say state party officials haven’t secured permission to conduct any of the caucuses in district schools.
Friday, Jan. 12, 2024 | 2 a.m.
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The Nevada GOP presidential caucuses are still weeks away and already they are a train wreck. Leaders of the Nevada Republican Party insist on hosting a private nominating party that is gift-wrapped for disgraced former President Donald Trump.
To ensure Trump’s victory, they are conducting the electoral equivalent of taking the ball and refusing to give it back unless they can make up the rules of the game. Among those rules: You, the taxpayer, must pay for their private nominating party.
The GOP has asked to use 32 public schools as host locations for its upcoming private presidential caucuses, but wants schools to provide the facilities in-kind, forcing administrators to fund the caucuses using money from their own operating budgets. This comes after lawmakers in 2021 elected to move from caucuses to primaries.
Oh, and there’s another hiccup: as reported in the Sun, none of the Clark County School District sites they list as caucus locations has yet been approved for use on Feb. 8. As we said, it’s a train wreck.
Unfortunately, it isn’t surprising.
Multiple leaders of the state Republican Party are under indictment for attempting to pass-off fake electors and fake election certification documents in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. When their plot to overthrow the results of that election failed and numerous judges and elected officials — including former Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican — certified Joe Biden as the winner, the leaders of the Nevada GOP immediately began their chaotic quest to rig the 2024 nominating process in favor of Trump.
By hosting private presidential caucuses that are separate and distinct from the voter-mandated presidential primaries, restricting candidates from simultaneously participating in the caucuses and the primaries, plus awarding all delegates to the winner of the caucuses, the Nevada GOP has created a system in which they can override the will of the voters as expressed at the ballot box simply by stacking the caucuses with Trump loyalists.
To that end, they’ve taken steps to limit participation in the caucus process as well.
Already, the timing of the caucuses has left tens of thousands of swing-shift workers in Nevada’s booming hospitality industry, as well as those with evening community or family responsibilities, without a viable means of participating in the GOP presidential nomination process. If that wasn’t enough, the GOP also disqualified anyone who hasn’t already registered as a Republican from participating in the caucuses by requiring 30-day advance registration.
Of course, there’s an irony to the fact that the GOP failed to hit that same deadline for caucus sites.
As a result, even registered Republicans will face the prospect of being disqualified as they struggle to navigate last-minute changes in caucus sites or the need for longer travel to neighboring precincts if no caucus site is secured locally. Never mind that current party rules prohibit caucus participants from casting a ballot outside of their own precinct …
None of this chaos was imposed upon the Nevada Republican Party. Its leaders knowingly fought to host a private party-run nominating event that is rife with opportunities for manipulation.And their sloppiness is so sweeping that now no one, even the GOP itself, knows where the caucuses will be held. This is the gang who wants to tell us all how voting should work?
To top it all off, they want taxpayers to bear the burden of their private party.
The caucus locations that have yet to be approved and are located on CCSD school grounds — traditional locations for election-related activity administered by the state.
When the state hosts elections at publicly owned sites like schools and community centers, it typically doesn’t pay for the use of those facilities. Instead, expenses like janitorial and security services come out of the school’s budget as an “in-kind” donation to the state that funds school districts in the first place.
Unlike the GOP caucuses, state-administered elections are bound by federal and state laws related to participation, access, transparency and accountability, including state laws allowing for same-day registration and regulations around early voting.
In the absence of these requirements, the GOP caucuses do not benefit many of Nevada’s Republicans, let alone taxpayers as a whole. Rather, the private caucuses benefit a small subset of party leaders who intentionally chose to host a private event that lacks the tools of transparency or accountability expected of a public election.
In fact, a compelling argument can be made that the GOP’s private caucus is a detriment to the public good. After all, hosting dozens of multi-hour events at public schools is not free. Custodians require overtime pay, security must remain on site after hours and administrators must take steps to ensure private events do not interfere with scheduled school activities.
Why should school administrators be forced to take money from their taxpayer-funded budgets to “sponsor” the Nevada Republican Party?
We believe they shouldn’t.
Voters already went to the ballot box and decided they want and will pay for primaries, not caucuses, going forward. It’s unreasonable for taxpayers to have to pay for the primary they approved and also the caucuses, which is essentially a vanity project — an ineptly planned one at that.
While we encourage CCSD to approve as many applications from the state GOP as are feasible in order to promote access to the caucuses, taxpayer-supported public schools should not bear any financial costs to ensure the GOP successfully throws itself a nominating party. The GOP needs to pay the schools for the use of the space and related resources, just as any non-state authorized event would pay. If that means the GOP is unable to successfully host private caucuses in each of the state’s precincts, the party may direct its members to participate in the government-administered primary elections that are already set to occur Feb. 6.
Oh, wait, they screwed that up too with their absurd rules dictating the primaries would not have the same ballot as the caucuses. Pity the poor Republican voter trying to sort through election lies on one hand, and comically messed election processes on the other.
