Nye County votes on primary election day
Nye County voters headed to the polls yesterday to cast their ballots in the Silver State’s primary election.
“Overall things have been going fairly smoothly,” Nye County Clerk Cori Freidhof told the Pahrump Valley Times at around 11 a.m. on primary day. “We had a little rush right at the beginning at seven o’clock, but other than that, nobody’s waited more than maybe three minutes to get checked in. Voting seems to be going smoothly and we’re doing good.”
After that initial rush, in the following hours, people came and went to vote at the Bob Ruud Community Center with no major lines. By 3:10 p.m. yesterday, Nye County saw 7,391 mail-in ballots returned.
“I fully believe in the right to vote. It’s what makes our country great,” Theo Eisenloffel said.
Nye County’s in-person voter turnout by 3 p.m. yesterday was 919. Clark County’s in-person primary day turnout by 3 p.m. was 18,157, Washoe County’s was 8,992, Elko County’s was 847 and Douglas County’s was 1,136.
“We feel that it’s our American privilege and duty to do so, and we feel that we cannot complain about people in office if we didn’t do our due diligence of voting,” explained voter Lori Bivins.
This year’s primary in Nevada also used new voting procedures different from the previous election.
“I walked right in and it was easy to understand and it worked,” Joe Schmidt said about the new voting procedure. “It looks secure. It doesn’t look like it’d be easy to cheat the system.”
Yesterday, after selecting choices on a machine, a physical ballot was printed, and then voters walked over to place it into a tabulating machine.
“This is a lot more efficient,” Bob Ruud Community Center poll worker Terri Torrence noted about the new procedure.
Local partisan races on this year’s primary ballot, much like Nye County itself, were red. No Democrats filed for Nye County specific offices this year, which means a few of these Republican primary races will essentially decide the winner ahead of the general election. Independents and third-party candidates won’t appear until the general election ballot.
In addition to the partisan county positions, this year’s primary election also saw a few nonpartisan offices on the ballot, such as Nye County sheriff; Pahrump justice of the peace, department B and three unopposed school board trustee seats.
For statewide primary Republican races, the offices of governor, secretary of state, state treasurer and attorney general were all present on the ballot. On the blue side of statewide offices, the primary will decide the Democratic nominee in the governor, lieutenant governor, state treasurer, state controller and attorney general races.
Republican primary voters in Nye County also voted for their pick in the U.S. representative race for Nevada’s 4th congressional district.
Contact reporter Elijah Dulay at edulay@pvtimes.com
