Date: Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Time: 4:00 PM
Committee: Assembly Legislative Operations & Elections
Nevada beware! As we enter the final days of the Legislative Session Democrats once again have another hearing for SB 292, a detrimental bill that attempts to attack voting.
SB 292 – Requiring a ballot in the general election to have an option to vote a straight ticket for partisan races; revising the qualification requirements for a minor political party; revising the deadline to challenge the qualification of a minor political party; revising provisions for filling a vacancy in the office of United States Senator, Representative in Congress or State Legislator; repealing various provisions relating to major political parties
Explanation of SB 292:
SB 292 enables straight-ticket voting here in Nevada. Straight-ticket voting allows voters to choose a party’s ENTIRE slate of candidates with just a single ballot mark. It discourages voter engagement and informed voting. Informed voters help improve the election process and ensure that the best candidate is elected to represent the concerns they have, an aspect of elected office Democrats in the Legislature HATE.
This bill requires the State of Nevada to hold a special primary election in place of the internal party nominating process to fill. That means two complete elections to fill a single vacancy. We don’t even know the expense of that because the Secretary of State declined to give an estimate on a “vacancy which may or may not occur”. Accordingly, the fiscal notes for this bill are understated by millions of dollars.
The third troubling issue with this bill is that the power to fill legislative vacancies will in large part be transferred from counties to the state. Legislative vacancies are currently filled by county commissioners from a pool of applicants of the same party as the departed legislator, with applicants nominating themselves to the pool under a process established by the county. However, under this bill the county commissioners would no longer set the process for how people can self-nominate for a vacancy. Instead, the Majority or Minority leader of the legislature would provide a list of nominees that they want the county commissioners to choose from. This means that the filling of a vacancy would be directed by the State Legislature, not by the county commissioners of the counties that the legislator represents.
