Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

After caucus dust settles, Nevada Dems look ahead to future with primaries

Nevada 2020 Caucus

Yasmina Chavez

Members of the Culinary Union arrive to check-in during the Democratic caucus at the Bellagio on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020.

Even though the Nevada presidential caucuses went off fairly seamlessly last weekend, prominent Democrats in the state almost immediately called for a switch to primaries for the next nomination cycle.

Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas, said on Twitter that he had already requested a bill draft that would switch the process to a primary next cycle. A spokesperson for Assembly Democrats said that there was no further information to share about the request.

It’s a bit too early to say what will happen in the next election cycle because any decisions will have to involve the Democratic National Committee, said William McCurdy, the chairman of the state Democratic Party.

“It’s going to be a legislative move, but obviously we want to make sure everyone is included in that conversation, which is extremely important for the state of Nevada,” McCurdy said.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the godfather of Democratic politics in Nevada, released a statement the day after the caucuses calling for multiple changes, including pushing for Nevada to be the first nominating contest and for the caucuses to be replaced by primaries. And when Reid speaks, others in the party listen.

“With so much Democratic enthusiasm in Nevada, demonstrated again by the tremendous caucus turnout this year, I believe we should make the process of selecting our nominee even more accessible. We’ve made it easier for people to register to vote here in Nevada in recent years and now we should make it easier for people to vote in the presidential contests,” Reid said in his statement. “That’s why I believe it’s time for the Democratic Party to move to primaries everywhere.”

McCurdy said the central concern around the caucus is its possible inaccessibility to voters who would not have the time to participate. He also urged to move to a primary.

“With automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration and us being able to extend early voting, I believe we’re perfectly positioned to move on to the next phase, which will ultimately bring more people into the process,” McCurdy said.

Gov. Steve Sisolak echoed the thoughts, saying, “It’s clear to me that despite the strong reforms we instituted for 2020, the caucus process has fundamental challenges that make it too difficult for too many Nevadans to participate.”

Were the results double-checked?

Molly Forgey, a spokesperson for the state Democratic party, said the iPad tool worked as the party had hoped, with no “major issues.”

“In terms of the actual iPads and the Google Form operating as it should, it did exactly what it was meant to do,” Forgey said. “It integrated the early vote data with the in-person data and we’re really happy that it ended up working out as we hoped.”

Once the results came in, Forgey said, there were multiple steps taken to verify the results, including doublechecking what was reported through a secure hotline and through paper reports.

“It went through a few rounds of audits,” Forgey said. “Of course, that’s something that takes time, but our No. 1 priority was getting the entire process right and making sure that our results were accurate and based off our reporting sheets. We took our time and did our due diligence to make sure that happened.”

No campaign made the call for a recount, and the delay was not so great as to see a repeat of the chaos in Iowa, whose caucus results took days to be confirmed and was the cause of much embarrassment.

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders won the Nevada caucus handily, with almost twice the vote of the second-place finisher Joe Biden. He won it so handily, in fact, that the race was called Saturday afternoon.

It capped more than two weeks of scrambling for the party, who reworked the caucus process over the first half of February after the mess in Iowa, scrapping months-old plans and developing a new tool designed to help with results reporting. The tool, a calculator designed to incorporate early voting results, came in handy, as over 105,000 voters participated in the caucus, though the vast majority of them — some 75,000 — participated in an early voting period.

“We saw a lot of energized Democrats turn out, especially with the historic early voting period,” Forgey said.