American voices are the safeguard against effort to suppress voting

Here’s a long-distance shout-out to the Nevadans who turned out in Reno this week in opposition to a proposed resolution to suppress the vote in Washoe County.

The resolution would have established a set of 20 new voting rules plainly designed to deter voters through intimidation and restrictions on balloting. Among them were provisions to station National Guard troops or sheriff’s deputies at each of the 20 early-voting locations and 65 primary-day balloting sites, and require most votes to be cast on paper ballots.

It failed on a 4-1 vote, mostly due to questions about its legality, but not before prompting six hours of public comments that included abundant parroting of the Big Lie.

The good news, though, was that a strong and passionate group of Washoe County residents turned out to oppose the resolution.

Notably, these foes included election volunteers and staffers, who came forward to defend the election process and protect the rights of voters.

Stepping forward was an act of courage for these individuals. In one of the most abhorrent ramifications of the 2020 election and the Republican Party’s falsehoods about widespread voter fraud, voting officials in Nevada and across the country were targeted with threats and intimidation by Americans who’d been weaponized by the party and its Big Lie.

The election staffers and volunteers should have been universally hailed as heroes of 2020 after overcoming the disruptions of the pandemic to hold free and fair elections, but instead a disconcertingly large portion of the population chose to vilify them.

With memories of this persecution all too fresh, it would have been perfectly understandable if those involved in the Washoe County balloting had skipped the public meeting.

They showed up, though, which speaks volumes about their character and selfless commitment to serving their fellow citizens.

Thanks in large part to them and their colleagues elsewhere — notably Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria and his team — voting in Nevada was accessible, convenient and secure last year, and remains so today. Our state also benefits from having lawmakers who, in contrast to Republican-led legislatures elsewhere, have made voting easier in recent years by expanding mail balloting, early voting, and such measures as the “motor voter” law that automatically registers eligible Nevadans to vote when they do business at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The Washoe County resolution would have taken that county in the wrong direction, and would have been a black mark for the entire state. Like restrictive laws elsewhere, it was a solution in search of a problem.

Not only that, it was unworkable and expensive. The sheriff’s office said it didn’t have enough personnel to assign officers to every polling place. Meanwhile, critics said switching to mostly paper ballots that would be counted by hand simply wouldn’t work, while costing some $5 million. The extra costs wouldn’t have ended there, either: If the resolution had passed, the American Civil Liberties Union was prepared to file a lawsuit to defeat it.

And all because of a fabricated crisis. No credible evidence of widespread voter fraud was found in Nevada or anywhere else despite the GOP’s blizzard of lawsuits and crooked vote audits. Nevada’s vote was certified by a Republican — Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske — who thoroughly rejected her party’s accusations of large-scale fraud.

Was the vote perfect? No, there were some irregularities. But examples of willful fraud were vanishingly few. In fact, the most widely reported example of deliberate fraud in Nevada involved a Republican voting twice, including with his deceased wife’s ballot.

The Washoe commissioners did the right thing in throwing out the resolution.

Measures like this aren’t about election security, they’re about deterring voting and reducing voting power, especially in minority communities. They result in the kind of outcomes we saw in Texas’ March 1 primary, where thousands upon thousands of ballots were thrown out due to minor technicalities stemming from the restrictive set of voting rules passed last year by state lawmakers.

Fortunately, Clark County is well protected at the moment from such suppressive measures. Our election officials and elected leaders are strong defenders of voting rights.

But that’s not the case everywhere. Nye County commissioners last week passed a resolution requesting that the county clerk adopt similar restrictions to the ones in Washoe County. Thus far, the clerk hasn’t made any changes.

The bottom line is that as long as the GOP is attacking voting rights, Americans everywhere must be prepared to defend them.

That’s exactly what happened in Washoe County, and for that we applaud the county election workers and others who stood up for democracy.