Voter turnout suggests it’s time to combine elections

Monday, July 3, 2017 | 2 a.m.

The argument against rescheduling local elections in Southern Nevada to coincide with voting on state and national races is officially dead.

It was buried under an avalanche of apathy among Clark County voters, only 8.7 percent of whom turned out for last month’s municipal elections.

Why so few votes?

The problem certainly wasn’t the caliber of the candidates. For the most part, they were capable and competent — certainly more fit for their offices than the candidate who won the biggest election in the land last November after drawing 63 million votes.

The likely causes were:

• Voter fatigue. Coming off of the death march that was the 2016 presidential election, with all of its ugly rhetoric at the presidential level and negative advertising among candidates for congressional seats, voters may have decided to take a break.

• Nature of the beast. It’s an aggravating fact of life that local elections generally draw low turnout. Although policies made at the city level often have vastly more immediate impact on Americans than those made in state and federal offices, voters turn out in higher numbers for higher-ticket elections. Go figure.

Granted, the elections for the most part weren’t at-large, which helps with turnout. For instance, there was only one North Las Vegas City Council race, meaning only voters in that ward received ballots.

Still, with the exception of a race for a Boulder City council seat, the turnout was anemic. Take the Las Vegas City Council race in Ward 6, where only 7,644 of 63,024 registered voters cast ballots. That’s just 12.1 percent turnout for a competitive race that included a high-profile candidate — Michele Fiore, a former Nevada legislator who gained infamy by becoming a front-and-center supporter of Cliven Bundy and his gang of militia thugs. Turnout was only slightly better in Ward 2, where 7,401 of 58,449 registered voters — 12.7 percent — voted in a bitterly contested race that featured heavy spending on attack ads.

Enough, already. There’s a long history of Southern Nevada voters staying home for local elections, and it’s time to try something different by lumping elections together and making it more convenient for voters to cast ballots for all offices.

North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee tried to do just that last year, but the council rejected the idea.

The arguments against Lee’s proposal were the same old and tired ones that have perpetuated the broken system for local elections. Among them:

• If municipal candidates are mixed in with those vying for Congress, governor or even president, they’ll be so far down on the ballot that voters will ignore them.

• The ad spending and media attention on higher-profile races would make it impossible for city candidates to be heard.

There is some truth to those arguments. But it’s trumped by the fact that the vast majority of voters already ignore city elections, a longtime trend that the Legislature tried to reverse in 2011 by passing a law allowing local governments to schedule their elections in tandem with state and national balloting.

Given the most recent numbers, it’s difficult to imagine how aligning the dates would hurt turnout in local races. And considering that it would also make voting more convenient for local residents, it’s an idea that’s time has come.