Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Voters can take their voice back

Informing voters should be a top priority for all Americans. Cries of voter disenfranchisement were loud and long when Voter ID was mentioned, even though the location of voters without IDs was largely a mystery.

There are conflicting election laws in Nevada that forbid certain people from voting, and a workaround law that makes it conveniently moot. The first law says only a Democrat or a Republican can vote in a partisan primary election. The other law, improved with Assembly Bill 321 in 2021, allows a voter to update their registration party label at any time, including during check-in at an election site.

In Nevada, there are 801,315 voters not registered with a major party label — more than are registered as either Democrats (717,068) or Republicans (624,156).

Nevada’s largest voting group will get a partial ballot with only nonpartisan candidates and cannot help choose nominees for the general election, unless they know they can update their registration, and actually ask to change it. Informing this constituency is the only responsible action of public officials and a duty of the media.

Otherwise, with typical low turnout of the most partisan voters at midterm primary elections, less than 500,000 Nevada’s 2,143,850 registered voters will choose who will be on the ballot in November. The rest of the voters will show up in November and wonder why there aren’t better choices.

The writer is a candidate for Nevada Congressional District 3.