John Locher / AP
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event, July 8, 2023, in Las Vegas.
Friday, Jan. 19, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Republican voters in Nevada are expressing confusion and anger about the ballot they received in the mail this week for the upcoming presidential preference primary.
Donald Trump is missing, and you can guess who they are wrongfully blaming: Democrats.
The commenter @JackMedia7 on the social media platform X posted a picture of his ballot with the message, “Please repost this! Unsolicited mail-in ballot from the Carson City Nevada secretary, as you see they removed Trump for the primary election! Democrats and Rinos (sic) intend on stealing the 2024 election.”
The truth is the Democrats aren’t the ones who kept Trump off the ballot. Rather, it’s his own party. Nevada Republican Party officials insisted on running their own “First in the West” caucuses, which have nothing to do with Nevada’s secretary of state.
State Republican Party officials forced Trump and other candidates to pass on participating in the Feb. 6 primary by creating rules that required all candidates to participate in either the GOP primary or the Republican caucuses but not both.
The state GOP officials further decided that only the caucus results would be used to determine Nevada’s delegates to the Republican National Convention, where the party’s presidential nominee will officially be selected.
Those caucuses come Feb. 8, two days after voting ends in Nevada’s Republican and Democratic presidential preference primaries.
The ballots being received this week from the Nevada secretary of state feature former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former U.S. Sen. Tim Scott. Scott and Pence suspended their campaigns after filing to be on the Nevada ballot.
In a post on X @Mikhiel_Thorson wrote, “I just got my ballot today for the state of Nevada. I am outraged and disgusted when I saw that President Donald Trump was NOT ON THE BALLOT!!!”
The Sun newsroom on Thursday also received phone calls from confused GOP backers expressing concern that neither Trump nor DeSantis were on their primary packet. Newspaper editors explained that it was the candidates’ decision to not participate in the primary and pointed to additional information in a story published in Thursday’s edition.
The Sun has repeatedly reached out to the local and state Republican Party officials for comment, but they aren’t responding. It is not known how or if they are contacting the state’s nearly 600,000 registered Republicans to take part in the caucuses.
That confusion was also expressed by social media users.
On X, @SarahLee_Hooper posted, “No Donald Trump.. No Vivek Ramaswamy.. and no Ron DeSantis.. Only Nikki Haley.. Help me understand Please!I looked it up.. and apparently there is also a GOP caucus? Why would Nevada do it this way? I have a lot of research to do.”
One Republican was so outraged they tagged right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson for help solving what is fast becoming a conspiracy theory, “Why is Trump not on the primary ballot in Nevada?!?,” @lopeznelson posted.
The Clark County elections department and secretary of state’s office have said they also were receiving phone calls from confused voters.
Poll workers in Clark County will be armed with a canned response that says, “the only candidates on Nevada’s presidential preference primary ballot are those who filed with the Nevada secretary of state’s office to run for president in this election. If a candidate did not file with the Nevada secretary of state’s office to run in this election, then that candidate’s name cannot appear on the ballot.”
Early voting is Jan. 27-Feb. 2.
The mail-in ballots were scheduled to begin hitting mailboxes Wednesday, according to the Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. To be counted, they must be postmarked by Feb. 6, Election Day.
Registered Republican voters can participate in both the state-hosted primary and party-hosted caucuses, but they must show a government-issued ID card at the caucuses. Same-day voter registration is permitted for the primary election; the registration deadline for the caucuses was Jan. 9.
President Joe Biden heads the list of candidates on the ballot for Nevada’s Democratic presidential preference primary, which also will be contested Feb. 6. None of the other 12 candidates on the Democratic ballot have a national following.
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