Here’s What We Know about What We Don’t Know about the ‘22 Elections in Nevada

(Chuck Muth) – The 2022 general election results are pretty much known all across the country except for Nevada and Arizona.

Results in Florida were pretty much known just 5 hours after polls closed.

Whatever Florida did is good for our democratic republic.  Whatever Nevada and Arizona are doing is bad.  No wonder so many voters in both states don’t trust the security of their election systems.

No matter how things ultimately turn out in both states, fixes need to be implemented before the 2024 election cycle.

That said, with what appears to be around 100,000 mail-in ballots yet to be counted in Nevada as of this morning – most coming out of Clark County where Democrats have a decided edge – Republicans currently leading by small margins are likely to end up…losing.

Don’t shoot the messenger!

That includes the U.S. Senate race, all three Clark County congressional races (though I still hold out hope for April Becker in CD3), and the races for Attorney General, Secretary of State and Treasurer.

And that has led many on the right to already start claiming “fraud” and “cheating.”

But the fact is, while there are clearly serious concerns about how badly fouled up our election system is in Nevada, and especially in Clark County, the real culprits for these anticipated losses are all the Republican voters who simply didn’t vote.

And the Nevada and Clark County Republican Party operations that failed to get them out to the polls.

Consider the following, acknowledging I’m not exactly a mathematician…

According to the Secretary of State’s website this morning, there are 1.86 million active registered voters in Nevada – with Democrats having a 52,000+ advantage over Republicans.

Now, if you add the approximately 100,000 uncounted mail-in ballots to those already accounted for, along with early voting and election day ballots, that’ll bring overall voter turnout to around 986,000 total ballots cast.

That’s a turnout rate of about 63%…which is 14 points lower than 77% turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

At the end of October, there were a little over 553,000 active registered Republicans in Nevada.

Let’s say Republicans turned out at a higher rate than Democrats, which usually happens.  And let’s be really generous and say it’s 75%.

OK, that still means over 138,000 active registered Republicans stayed home on Tuesday and didn’t vote.  And what does that mean?

Well, look at the U.S. Senate race between Democrat incumbent Catherine Cortez-Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt…

As of this morning when I checked, Laxalt was ahead by fewer than 16,000 votes.

Now let’s say Cortez-Masto gets 60% of the remaining 100,000 outstanding mail-in ballots and Laxalt gets 40%…which is reasonable considering how many of those remaining mail-in ballots will come from Democrat-heavy Clark County.

That would give Cortez-Masto 481,042 votes and Laxalt 476,854. Which means Laxalt would lose by 4,188 votes…

…while more than 138,000 active registered Republicans apparently stayed home.

When I checked before sending this out, Republican Secretary of State candidate Jim Marchant was ahead of his Democrat opponent by a much smaller number – fewer than 1,900 votes.  Which means once the mail-in ballots are counted, he’s likely to end up losing.

Ditto Republican Treasurer candidate Michele Fiore, who currently leads by just over 3,400 votes.  Even if the Democrat only gets 52% of the mail-in vote and Michele gets 48%, she’d still lose by 591 votes.

Wish it wasn’t so…but the math is the math.

Of course, these are just projections and guesstimates by a guy who still uses an abacus (ask you grandma).  It’s still possible some of these GOP candidates will pull a rabbit out of the hat.

But I wouldn’t go betting the farm on it.

Now, you can claim – as Donald Trump did this morning – that the Clark County voting system is “corrupt” until the cows come home.  But even if true, that doesn’t excuse the Republicans who sat this one out or the colossal failure of the GOP party organizations to turn them out.

Again, I’m not saying there aren’t problems and legitimate concerns with how our elections are conducted.  There are.

The POTENTIAL for fraud by automatically mailing ballots to voters who don’t request them (and maybe don’t even live at the address where they’re mailed any longer) is, indeed, a major concern.

But please don’t come bitchin’ to me that the anticipated GOP losses in close races were due to “fraud” and “cheating” when 138,000+ Republicans didn’t vote!

The blame for those losses belongs to those Republicans who stayed home and the Nevada and Clark County Republican Party operations that didn’t get those Republicans to the polls.

And trust me…they knew who they were.

It’s a simple vote history database.  Every party organization and every campaign has access to them.  It’s VERY simple to identify which registered Republicans, based on their past voting record, are unlikely to vote, especially in a non-presidential election year.

You just have to focus SERIOUS effort on actually getting them to the polls or mailing in their ballots rather than simply dropping literature on their doorsteps.

Physician, heal thyself.

And with that, I’m going to go pack for ConservaCruise ’22. See ya in 10 days.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“It’s true Clark County can’t finish counting ballots until Saturday (or next week with signature cures/provisionals). But the election department could have counted them a lot faster – and released relevant information (D/R breakdown of ED mail drop offs) sooner.” – Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Victor Joecks

Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views and blogs at MuthsTruths.com.  His views are his own.