This week, the US state of Nevada has been dealing with an interesting---and confusing---scenario for their primary voting process.
In 2021, legislators in the US state of Nevada passed a law requiring primary elections whenever more than one candidate appeared on the ballot. While there does have to be a primary election in the state, the law doesn't say how to assign their delegates.
And in August of last year, the state’s Republican Party announced that they would be holding their caucus for February 8, 2024, the rules of which appeared to favor Trump.
At least three caucus overseers reportedly face felony charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election in an attempt to keep Trump in power, and Trump is also said to have “wooed” the three at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last year.
Former UN ambassador and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley will be on the primary ballot, while former President Donald Trump will be competing in the caucuses. The Nevada GOP said it will award its 26 delegates to whomever wins the caucus vote. Trump is essentially guaranteed to win the caucuses, and won the state’s caucuses in 2016 with nearly 46% of the vote.
“The First in the West Caucus underscores Nevada’s prominence as a key player in the Presidential nomination process. The Caucus will provide Nevada voters with the unique opportunity to engage with the candidates, discuss important issues, and voice their opinions on the future direction of the Republican Party,” the party said at the time, in a news release.
During a January 27 campaign visit to Las Vegas, Trump told his Nevada supporters to skip the primary and described it as a “con job” and a “meaningless event”.
Meanwhile, the Nevada presidential primaries offer voters the option to select “none of these candidates” which means even though Haley has little competition in the primaries, she may not actually win them. Voters are also able to participate in both the primary ballots and caucusing.
One Nevada voter was angered and confused that her mail-in ballot didn’t include the candidate she wanted, and that her only option was Haley.
“If you don’t want me to be a conspiracy theorist, then be transparent,” she said, after learning that other candidates had decided to participate in the state’s caucus. “Send me all of the information at once.”
Many voters who saw that their primary ballots did not show Trump’s name were also angered, and believed he had been kicked off the ballot by a court for his role in the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill—enigmatic of Colorado case that is pending before the US Supreme Court. But a judge in Nevada rejected a similar challenge to Trump’s legitimacy in Nevada’s primary voting process.
“It does make the misinformation environment more dangerous,” added Gowri Ramachandran, deputy director of elections and government for the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program. “These information gaps about voting, how it works, that sort of thing, can get filled in by incorrect information.”
“It’s clear from January 6 that when that kind of misinformation spreads, it has a negative impact on people’s trust in elections and willingness to abide by the results,” she added. “It’s had a negative effect on democracy over the years.”