Sunday, Feb. 2, 2020 | 2 a.m.
Leaders in the state Democratic Party knew they had to make changes after the 2016 Nevada Democratic presidential caucuses. They admit the process was flawed as disagreements between the party’s moderate and progressive wings produced arguments, quarrels and plenty of hard feelings.
They agreed: The 2020 Nevada caucuses on Feb. 22 had to be better managed and more welcoming.
“Obviously 2016 was contentious at times, and so I think there was a lot of healing and listening that we needed to do as a party post-that,” said Alana Mounce, the state party’s executive director.
The tension came to a head at the state convention, in which multiple delegates for Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont were denied the ability to vote because they were not registered as Democrats in time for the convention, the party said. Hillary Clinton won the delegate vote by 33 over protests from Sanders’ supporters that their delegates were unfairly disqualified.
So, party officials took action.
First, they went through a self-evaluation of the caucus system. Next, they listened to multiple stakeholders for feedback. State chairman William McCurdy and other Democratic officials received input from caucusgoers and campaign staffers around the state. McCurdy said the party set up a “caucus-to-convention committee” to identify both what the party did right and wrong in the 2016 caucuses.
“During the course of that conversation, we heard everything from, the process just being long, folks not being educated enough to know how to run their own precinct caucuses, the wait time, the inability for our seniors to participate,” McCurdy said. “The result of that is, actually in a nutshell, what you see today.”
The caucus-to-convention committee, which by design included supporters from different presidential campaigns, former party staff and Democratic National Committee members. This committee examined how to make check- in easier, how to better manage line length and plans to do more outreach and training.
Mounce said that the party was working off three principles in 2020: making the caucuses expansive, accessible and transparent.
“Whichever team you were on in the previous election, we heard from you and incorporated some of those changes,” she said.
Those improvements have been noticed by the Sanders campaign, said Sarah Michelsen, the campaign’s state director. They are confident in a smooth and fair caucus process, she said.
“I think the party has been nothing but above board in all of their dealings with us and I feel like they’ve treated us as (equal) to every other campaign,” Michelsen said. “I haven’t seen any type of favoritism from the party at all.”
As an example of the party’s commitment to transparency, Mounce said raw vote totals would be released for caucusgoers’ first and final candidate choices, letting observers track how voters’ selections change over the process. Caucus materials also will be available in English, Spanish and Tagalog.
Perhaps the biggest change is the rollout of an early voting period from Feb. 15 to Feb. 18, which was a mandate of the Democratic National Committee to increase accessibility to voters. Early voting sites will be at around 80 locations around the state, including on the Las Vegas Strip, a move the party said was built to increase accessibility to union workers.
These early votes will be tabulated and added to precinct-level data on Caucus Day.
Mounce said that it was important to the party to take the recommendations and requirements from different stakeholders and institute them in a way that would make the process easier and accessible.
“It was taking what we heard and the DNC required and making sure that it was uniquely Nevada and reflected our state,” she said.
The party is assembling a large contingent of volunteers and workers to staff early voting and caucus sites, as well, with trainings held throughout the state.
Mounce said that the ramp-up in recruitment and education was necessary around the caucuses. She said that the party hit the ground especially early this year, and was considering the caucus process not as one day, but as a series of voting days over the last half of February.
“I think that just like in any election cycle, there is a lot of volunteer recruitment that needs to happen, there is a lot of voter education that needs to happen (and) there is a lot of voter registration that needs to happen,” Mounce said.
