Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley is frustrated by the low voter turnout for the state’s primary election, according to Sunday’s Review Journal front page. Despite Nevada’s embrace of universal mail ballots, early voting opportunities and a bevy of physical polling locations, roughly four out of every five registered voters didn’t cast a vote in this year’s primary election.
Maybe it’s time to pull the plug on automatically mailing 1.5 million ballots.
This practice was launched in 2020 to “help reduce the spread of COVID 19,” according to then-Gov. Steve Sisolak. Democratic state lawmakers doubled down at the time, saying they were giving voters more options to participate in the election when in-person voting poses a legitimate health risk. But now that the COVID-19 hazard is no longer a health threat, and voter turnout is low, what’s the argument for continuing this practice, especially given the inherent risks (voter manipulation, ballot harvesting, etc.) that come with universal mail ballots?
I suspect most fair-minded voters would agree that the cornerstone of our election process is confidence in the integrity of each vote cast. Universal mail ballots bring more risk to election integrity while doing nothing to increase voter turnout (at least in Nevada).
