Isaac Brekken / New York Times, file
Voters fill a room at Palo Verde High School, a Republican caucus site in Las Vegas, Feb. 23, 2016. Nevada Republicans confirmed on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023, that the state would jump the traditional line in the presidential nominating calendar by scheduling a caucus for Feb. 8, 2024.
Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The Nevada Republican Party is seeking volunteers to man the undetermined number of sites in the Las Vegas area for its “First in the West” caucuses early next month.
Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County GOP, sent an email this week with the subject line, “Need Volunteers for the Caucus!” The note detailed needing volunteers for check-in tables, help desks and as ushers.
The Nevada Republican Party is hosting the caucuses in just over two weeks, at 5 p.m. Feb. 8, instead of participating in the Feb. 6 Republican presidential preference primary run by the Nevada secretary of state.
The secretary of state’s office coordinates with Nevada’s 17 counties, arranging for poll workers for each voting site and training those workers on election procedures, including security measures such as verifying the signature of voters.
Early voting in the primary begins Saturday.
“Our state runs some of the most accessible, secure elections in the country,” Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said this month. “This is possible thanks to the hard-working election officials that have been working tirelessly to prepare and the poll workers that are gearing up to help make these elections happen.”
But the GOP event won’t have the oversight of the state.
The GOP set the rules for how its event will operate, telling presidential hopefuls they had to pick between running in the primary or caucuses. They can’t do both, meaning former President Donald Trump is part of the caucuses and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is part of the primary.
The party will use caucus results to determine the state’s delegates for the Republican National Convention this summer.
After Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race Sunday, Trump and Texas millionaire Ryan Binkley are the lone candidates in the caucuses. Haley is the lone candidate still running a viable campaign on the Republican primary ballot.
The state GOP’s decision to have the caucuses, along with its decision to ignore the primary outcome, has caused great confusion among Nevada’s nearly 600,000 active Republican voters, some of whom reached out to election offices last week when their presidential preference primary ballots arrived without Trump’s name on them.
The state GOP has said it would require photo identification for registered Republican voters to participate in the caucuses.
But the party isn’t answering questions from the Sun about how its caucuses will operate or what kind of training its volunteers would undergo. The newspaper reached out to the party again Tuesday for comment but received no replies.
Law’s email lists duties for each volunteer in need.
For the check-in volunteer, “voters are checked in at a table in the front of the caucus location by precinct. Two precinct check-in volunteers are needed per precinct at each location,” the email states.
Ushers are needed to direct voters to a check-in line based on the voting precinct, it said. And volunteers to run the help desk, “help a voter find out what precinct they are in, where to submit their ballot or any other miscellaneous questions.”
Meanwhile, the Clark County GOP is still working to hammer down its local caucus sites.
The Clark County School District said it had approved 42 sites the party requested to use, but a CCSD spokesperson said Tuesday that some of those approved sites had been pulled back because of scheduling conflicts with student activities.
We asked CCSD for the list of sites, but the spokesperson said even the approved sites were in flux and to check back later.
The spokesperson said last week that at least 60 sites the party had requested were unavailable because of student events, like a basketball game. The spokesperson said student activities have the highest priority at the schools.
—The Sun’s Hillary Davis contributed to this report.
