Early voting in primaries not showing presidential bounce

By Jeremy Twitchell

Thursday, April 2, 2009 | midnight

As the 2009 municipal primaries draw near, candidates and election clerks around Clark County are seeking to capitalize on the buzz generated by the 2008 presidential election. They hope to draw thousands of newly registered voters into local politics.

Through the first 10 days of the 14-day early voting period in Clark County's five municipalities, however, the desired bounce in voter turnout has failed to materialize.

Though Henderson, Boulder City and North Las Vegas are on track to marginally surpass early voter turnout percentages from the last municipal primaries, dismal early turnout in Las Vegas has the county as a whole on track to have fewer early ballots cast this year than in 2007, according to records from the Clark County Elections Department.

At the current pace, fewer than 23,000 residents will cast a vote by the time early voting ends on Friday. That would be more than 2,000 fewer ballots than were cast in the 2007 municipal primaries, despite the fact that this year's election has more than 108,000 additional registered voters compared to 2007, records show.

David Damore, an associate political science professor at UNLV who specializes in campaigns and elections, said the low turnout was to be expected, and if anything, the presidential election may have a negative impact on voter turnout in the municipal primary.

"This (turnout) is pretty much typical," he said. "It's probably even a little bit lower because there's so much fatigue from the last election."

Damore said municipal primaries generally draw only the most hard-core voters, so expecting the voters who registered for the first time to vote in the presidential election to show up for the municipal election isn't realistic.

That didn't stop local candidates and municipalities from trying.

In Henderson, City Clerk Monica Simmons oversaw a voter outreach campaign that included mailers, promotion on the city's Web site and information booths at city recreation centers and the Galleria at Sunset shopping mall.

For those efforts, Henderson has logged a 4.3 percent early turnout in the first 10 days and is on track for 6 percent — a slight increase over the 5.7 percent early voter turnout in 2007, election department records show.

Stirring up the kind of interest that the presidential election created is more difficult with the relatively miniscule campaign budgets with which municipal candidates operate, she said.

"You hope that (new voters) want to stay engaged, but the fact is that those people have been touched by millions of dollars in campaigning, compared to the thousands of dollars that municipal candidates have to spend," she said.

Since 1999 in Clark County, the percentage of municipal primary voters who vote early has grown in each election, from 27 percent in 1999 to 45 percent in 2007, election department records indicate.

If that trend continues, low turnout in early voting could be a precursor to low turnout on Election Day.

Through the first 10 days, Boulder City had the highest turnout, with 18.2 percent of all voters casting an early ballot, on pace for an early vote turnout of 25.5 percent. In 2007, Boulder City had 21.7 percent turnout in early voting.

Henderson and North Las Vegas each were at 4.3 percent turnout and on pace for 6 percent. Henderson had 5.7 percent early turnout in 2007, while in 2005, the last time North Las Vegas held a citywide election (the 2007 primary was only for the voters of Ward IV), four percent of voters participated in early voting, according to election department records.

Simmons said the anticipated small increase in Henderson isn't as big as she had hoped, but any increase is welcome.

"Are the numbers dramatically different? Not so much," she said. "They weren't so great to begin with. But I'm the eternal optimist. Our numbers are up, and that's a good thing."

Las Vegas, which only had 1.6 percent of voters cast a ballot in the first 10 days of early voting, was on pace for an early voting turnout of 2.4 percent. In the 2007 primary, the city had an early voting turnout of 5.8 percent.

Mesquite's early voting numbers are down from 2007, though still relatively high at 17.9 percent through the first 10 days, on pace for 25.1 percent. In 2007, Mesquite had 39.8 percent turnout during early voting.