Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

One Las Vegas voter: ‘I didn’t even want to vote today’

As polls close, message from some Southern Nevadans is one of despair over presidential choices

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M. Spencer Green / AP

Friday was the final day of early voting ahead of Nevada’s primary elections on Tuesday, June 12, 2018.

If there’s one thing uniting Americans on both sides in this election, it’s the overwhelming distaste for the presidential campaign.

That despair clearly made its way to Las Vegas, where many who turned out to vote today often wondered aloud why they had even bothered.

“I didn’t even want to vote today, but I felt like I had to do my duty,” said Angelo Mauri, who ended up voting for Trump but said he wasn’t happy about it. “I wanted a spaceship to come down during the last debate and just suck both of them up forever. I’m not happy at all.”

Dislike for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has proved to be the defining quality of the race.

A recent study by the RAND Corporation found that the number of voters who would voluntarily choose a third option was actually higher than those who said they actively supported either candidate. The only thing that gave Clinton and Trump majorities in the study were those who said they would vote for one candidate just to prevent the other from being elected.

Liz Hansen, who went with her friend Larry Koepke to vote at Rowe Elementary School near UNLV, said that she was initially on the fence about voting in this election. Then she saw how it unfolded.

“I couldn’t in clear conscience pull the lever for either one,” she said. “In the past I’ve felt like I really should have voted, but not in this one.”

Koepke said he supported Trump just because he wasn’t part of the establishment, which he blamed for many of the country’s current problems.

“We have 315 million people in this country, and yet we only have two main choices?” he said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

Henderson bartender and registered nonpartisan Daylon Green, 43, said at Coronado High School that he voted for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and a mix of both Democrats and Republicans further down the ballot to keep things balanced.

“I flipped a coin this morning to decide if I was going to go vote,” he said. “It’s the most disgusting election I’ve ever seen.”

A whopping 81 percent of voters in a Huffington Post survey said they just wanted the election to be over, a finding that seems to be backed by many local voters.

At Beatty Elementary School near the Silverton, a lifelong Democrat and retired Riviera bartender named Sonny (he wouldn’t give his last name) said he agreed with a lot of what Trump said, but voted for Clinton because he found the infamous businessman to be a bully.

But, in line with the general feeling of dissatisfaction many feel toward both parties, he added: “I’ve always been a Democrat, but I’ve never seen any changes.”

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