Vote Nevada Supporters,

Yesterday, we had our second successful Practice Ranked Choice Voting Zoom event.  Thank you to everyone who attended.  Attendees asked great questions, including one about how the county clerks and registrars of elections feel about implementing ranked-choice voting. 

Luckily, Carson City Clerk Scott Hoen attended and gave his perspective as a clerk.  I spoke with Lorena Portillo, who took over for Joe Gloria as the Clark County elections administrator, so I could share what Lorena told me.  She affirmed that our voting machines include software to manage ranked-choice elections. Still, the software only allows ranking for up to 3 candidates, so we will need a software upgrade to manage 5 candidates.  This will resemble our upgrades to the mail-in ballot signature verification system.

The more significant issues, and Scott’s response, focused on funding for our election operations, from voter registration to counting mail-in ballots to voter education.  We have adopted many election system upgrades over the last twenty years, yet our legislature has often not adequately funded implementation.

Automatic voter registration at the DMV is one example.  We register thousands of people to vote automatically unless the voter opts out. Yet, we spend almost nothing to ensure new voters can access the civics information needed to become confident voters.  We also devote nothing to virtual and in-person practice opportunities where voters can practice casting an in-person or mail-in ballot. 

Creating voting barriers for voters who need civics education is eerily like a time when we used literacy tests to prohibit Black Americans from voting.  And keeping people in the dark about our election processes allows conspiracies to blossom and grow out of control.

A related unfortunate affliction of our political system is how expensive it is to engage in direct democracy opportunities.  Participating in our ballot question process is prohibitively expensive, which means the political parties and wealthy community members have full access, while average Nevadans have almost none.  Organizations and individuals with money can pay lawyers, advertising agencies, and media outlets to shape the reform narrative.  Meanwhile, grassroots engagers have minimal influence over this tool of direct democracy.

Ballot Question 3’s grassroots supporters face this problem.  We are trying to offer as much voter education and chances to practice ranked choice voting as possible but with minimal funding.  

We are doing our best, so please take a little time to learn about the Ballot Question 3 reforms and participate in a practice ranked-choice voting election.

Here is yesterday’s Practice Ranked Choice Voting Election event recording: https://vote-nevada.news/Practice-RCV-July-13

We have three in-person sessions to practice ranked choice voting on July 16th in Reno and July 20th and 27th in Las Vegas.  Please RSVP here to attend: https://forms.gle/EmztaurQwE7mnmsm7

Here are the resources related to ranked-choice voting I sent after our first meeting: https://vote-nevada-blog.org/2024/07/06/practice-ranked-choice-voting-update-7-6-2024/

Thank you for being Nevadans with me,

Sondra

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Vote Nevada is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit civic engagement organization.  Anyone can become a supporter by emailing info@vote-nevada.org; we have no membership dues. You can now donate to Vote Nevada through PayPal at  https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=L423L7FBMMBEA