This week on Nevada Week , Election Day in Nevada is over, but Election Week in the Silver State continues.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week .

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Nevada's election results, why do they seem to take so long?

As of this taping on Thursday morning, November 10th, only one of the four Nevada House races has been decided, with Republican Representative Mark Amodei handily defeating Elizabeth Mercedes Krause in Northern Nevada's 2nd Congressional District.

So why the delay in the state's other top-of-the-ticket races?

Here to discuss that and more are David Damore, Interim Executive Director of the Lincy Institute and Brookings, Mountain West, as well as Chair of the Department of Political Science at UNLV; April Corbin Girnus, Deputy Editor at the Nevada Current; Dan Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science at UNLV; and Jessica Hill, Politics Reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Thank you all for sharing your time with Nevada Week.

Nevada getting results on election day, is that a thing of the past, David?

(David Damore) As long as we're gonna go with the mail, yeah.

In particular, you saw, you know, 2020, right?

Emergency procedures, first time through.

Last time you have efforts to clean it up in the legislature, but extending the acceptance of ballots through Saturday ensures that we're going to be here at least till Saturday.

-Okay, so there are mail-in ballots used in other states.

Why is Nevada one of the remaining couple handful as of Thursday in which we don't have definitive results, Dan?

(Dan Lee) Right.

Well, a lot of states actually have-- They have to be received by Election Day.

So that's one difference.

We just need to have it postmarked by Election Day, and we're accepting it through Saturday.

So you know, that's one big difference.

The other difference is we're a swing state.

We have a lot of competitive races where these mail-in ballots can actually make a difference.

And we're especially seeing this dynamic where-- Democrats especially use it.

So we're seeing this-- And same thing in 2020.

Republicans take the lead, Democrats are trying to make a comeback.

We got to wait for mail-in ballots to come in, right?

So all those things are, you know, contribute to why we're waiting around past Election Day.

-The other part of it is the administration, right?

Our structure was set up for early in-person voting in an in-person Election Day voting.

Now you're transitioning to mailing, right?

It's gonna take much longer to process.

You need more staff, and then obviously dealing with the-- just the onslaught of ballots this time around.

You've heard Joe Gloria talk about that, that there's just so many that-- so much work that has to be done, when to-- to process a mail ballot, compared to somebody who votes in person.

-Is this a resources issue?

Are you hearing that, Jessica, from Clark County, Washoe County?

(Jessica Hill) You know, we haven't heard that.

Someone on Twitter did say something about how there's a resource issue, how Joe Gloria, he said that that is not an issue.

He has never heard of that.

The department is fully staffed and operating, and they're doing the best they can as quickly as they can, legally.

-Are you hearing anything, April?

(April Corbin Girnus) Not really.

The people who are upset about it are people who want to call the races.

They want to know the outcome of the races, right?

But like Clark County, in particular, has never missed a statutory deadline for counting ballots.

And that's what Joe Gloria has said over and over again.

He says, We don't care about the media pundits and the TV shows and their deadlines.

They care about the statute, the when the votes have to be counted, when they have to be finalized, and when they have to be certified by the Supreme Court.

They make all of those deadlines, and they're on track to make those deadlines this year.

It's just frustrating for people like us who are waiting and watching and wanting to know those results.

-It is important to clarify that I say, "a delay in results."

But technically legally, it's not.

They have until-- I mean, when do they have until to certify these results?

-What is the actual?

-It's gonna be-- -Next Friday, the 18th.

-Yeah, it's the 18th, yeah.

-So we have a ways.

-And there's a whole nother process with canvassing, you know, making sure that those signatures are verified, and that's gonna take a little bit of time too, like through Wednesday.

-Okay.

So let's start off with what we have left to count.

Mail-in ballots.

What are we waiting on?

When do we know those are going to be in and we have to have them counted by?

What was that deadline?

-So we're waiting for the mail-in ballots that were submitted on Election Day.

You know, you could turn in your mail-in ballot into the mailbox on Election Day, and it will take a while to come in to the department.

The Clark County Election Department is also working on counting those ballots that were dropped off at drop boxes on Election Day as well.

So we have like an unknown number of mail-in ballots that, you know, were mailed on Election Day that Joe Gloria doesn't know how many yet.

We also have around like 70,000 ballots that were dropped off on Election Day that still need to be counted.

-These mail-in ballots, who do they tend to favor?

-Clearly the Democrats.

You've seen, at least in the releases from last night, both in Washoe and Clark, 2 to 1 for Cortez Masto and a little less for Sisolak.

He's going to be running a little behind Cortez Masto there.

But that goes to Dan's point about the sort of polarization of how we actually now cast our votes.

-Oh, my gosh.

So then, if it's going the same direction as in 2020, Republicans look like they're leading, then it goes more towards the Democrats, are we going to have issues of election fraud claims?

-Right, that's probably, probably going to happen.

Because the way it looks now is, between the top-of-the-ticket races-- gubernatorial, Senate race-- it looks like there's a good chance that Cortez Masto could overtake Laxalt.

And, right.

And he was in the center of the 2020 aftermath, right, leading those calls for or claims of voter fraud.

So I imagine he's gonna do it for his own race, losing this race.

So, you know, he might call for a recount.

But I mean, in addition to that, definitely, I think-- I don't want to say definitely, but it's pretty likely he's gonna, you know, raise some lawsuits, bring up some lawsuits.

-I think it's a tougher flooding, though, right?

Because you now have this in statute.

It's in NRS.

They cleaned that up.

Then if you end up with split outcomes, how do you explain that as fraud, right?

If you have-- -Right.

But the claim is, Well, Lombardo could have won by more, sort of, you know?

So it doesn't necessarily call into legitimacy, you know-- Because if you're gonna blame-- For instance, if they focus on these mail-in ballots again, then that's like where, you know, they just, the Democrats just expanded their lead, you know, in both races, right?

So Lombardo could have won by more.

It was pivotal in Laxalt's race where he lost because of it, he would claim.

So, I mean, I don't know.

It just seems like to me the most likely, if I had to choose what's gonna happen, I see lawsuits.

-Polls have shown that Lombardo had better likability among his own party than Laxalt had among his own party.

So it kind of-- These results that we are seeing does make sense.

So it'll be interesting to see what Adam Laxalt does after this.

However, he has said that, among some pressure, he said that Joe Biden is the legitimate President.

And then he also told the RGJ that he would accept the election results.

-April, in your opinion, would it have helped Laxalt had he never questioned the results of the 2020 election, or was that helpful for him?

-You know, I mean, he rode the Trump wave.

So I think it was helpful at the time; and in 2020, he was right on there.

And we saw after the 2020 election and then January 6 insurrection that Laxalt went quiet for a long time.

He sort of fell off the radar for like a solid six months, at least publicly.

I think a lot of Republicans were doing that at the time, because they were trying to see whether or not Trumpism was like dead and we're over it because they just, you know, tried to storm the Capitol, or if it was gonna come back.

And I think it's come back.

And he's ridden that wave.

I mean, he had a solid primary challenger, who I think was a little less Trumpy than him.

Clearly, it served him there.

And I think that's just part of his brand and who he is, for better or worse, you know?

-In the Trump wave that we're talking about, where does that stand now in the days after this election?

-You know, certainly the pundit class is sort of saying this is the end of Trump, and DeSantis has now been sort of anointed as the sort of heir apparent to that.

You know, certainly I think you look at some of those candidates that he backed.

They were problematic.

And, you know, we've seen this not just this cycle for the Republicans, you go back over cycles before when they put more extreme candidates in, in races they should have won in favorable environments.

That's a problem that they have.

What the solution to that is, we shall see.

You know, some, I think, some of the good news for the Republicans, as you see this infusion of sort of new leadership in the party, you see some new House candidates, some younger candidates there who are not tied to this sort of Trump model there.

So that gives them some hope there.

But at the end of the day, it's going to be closely divided in Congress here.

And then all of a sudden, we're gonna start talking 2024.

-Before you know it.

Mail-in ballots, as you said, tend to favor the Democrats.

But as of this Thursday, two days after Election Day, it may not be enough to get incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak to retain his seat.

And it seems to be he's the lone kind of Democrat at the top of the ticket races that would not be retaining the seat.

What do we think is behind his possible loss, Dan?

-I think you can look at both sides.

Like what's good about Lombardo, what's bad about Sisolak, right?

So Sisolak was governor during the pandemic with the shutdowns.

Hurt the Nevada economy, right?

So a lot of people kind of have negative views towards him based on his COVID response.

And then you look on the other side.

Lombardo, again, comparing Lombardo versus Laxalt, having more higher favorability among Republicans.

Also you can imagine him among independents, because he distanced himself, at least for most of the campaign, more so from Trump than Laxalt did.

So, right.

So on both ends, I mean, that's just contributed why Sisolak is more vulnerable.

Like he-- You know, his approval, lower; Lombaro's approval, higher, especially among independents.

So that's where we're at.

-You also have to look at the other Republicans at the top of the ticket.

Our Secretary of State race, the Republican Jim Marchant, is an election denier who, like, has said on the record that he wants to get rid of early voting, which is like massively popular and been around for decades, right?

Like, that's pretty extreme.

You had an Attorney General candidate who told people that her opponent should be hanging from a crane.

There were some pretty extreme candidates, and I think that speaks to what is probably going to be their losses.

Whereas, Lombardo doesn't have that.

You know, he is really also a blank slate.

Like he has-- He's in office as Clark County Sheriff, but he hasn't, you know, passed laws or done anything like that.

So it's like high name recognition, and we actually don't know what kind of governor he's gonna be, which is probably attractive to people when the governor was on TV for a straight year, you know, talking about unemployment and all of those things, which, you know, may not be his fault.

But if you're at the top of the government, you're gonna get blamed for that.

-He's got a record to look at.

-And I think it's, you know, on top of that-- The point is he's been elected in Clark County twice before.

So he's a known entity here.

I think that's one of the reasons why the Republicans want a southern R at the top of the ticket.

-Explain that further.

-Right.

Because, you know, this is the Southern Nevada Clark County Democratic stronghold, right?

But if you can cut into that margin here, and we've seen him be able to do that, comparing relative to Cortez Masto, those are harder votes for the Democrats to make up elsewhere in the state.

And that's what we're seeing at the top of the ticket there.

Even though last dumps in Washoe have been good for the Democrats there, you still see him running behind in Washoe, running behind, obviously, in the rurals pretty extensively.

-We've been talking about Clark and Washoe Counties.

What about Nye County?

Jessica, I understand after we finish taping, you're heading out there.

And what's going on with them hand counting ballots?

Also using a tabulation machine.

-Right.

So things have been kind of back and forth.

The Secretary of State's office said, Yes, you could hand count, but then it was challenged.

And then like, Okay, no, you can't hand count at least before the Election Day because of the way-- When before polls closed, they were like-- They had a plan to read aloud the results with a live stream, and that's kind of, you know, you could be counting, and you could decide who the winner is.

So that was, you know, voted no, you can't do that.

However, now, the hand counting will resume today, on Thursday.

They had some volunteers come in and get trained yesterday.

And as far as we know, the process is underway.

-That sounds a little risky to have volunteers come in a day before.

-It'll be interesting.

They did use a machine to, you know, tabulate the results.

And they sent that to the Secretary of State.

However, this is gonna be really like an audit, you know, second guessing, you know, trying to just double check the results of the machines to, you know, verify they're the same.

It kind of-- It'll be interesting to see what will happen when the hand counting does not match up with the machine counting.

You know, some people say, Will this give people who, you know, have a little bit of hesitations about the process, will it give them more confidence when they see, Oh, actually, when I hand count, it's the same thing as the machines.

Maybe they're reliable.

Or it could do the opposite where, you know, it shows that maybe the machines aren't reliable in those voter's eyes.

So it will be interesting to see how that works out.

-How did Election Day go in Nevada in total?

Have you heard any stories of problems at polls?

-It seemed like it was pretty smooth in terms of-- I mean, you had long lines at certain places that are really-- But that's not unusual.

And you know, I think people just tend to go to the same places to vote.

And there's lines and, you know, sometimes there's weather delays and things that push people back, but I didn't hear of any sort of major issues or, you know, there was no threats and sort of voter intimidation.

That was something a lot of people were wondering, whether or not we would see that.

But there didn't seem to be very many reports of that.

So it seemed like it was pretty smooth.

-Just a few.

-Senator Catherine Cortez Masto tried to-- She filed a lawsuit trying to keep the polls open longer.

That didn't really work out, but-- -And what was her claim for that?

Why was she arguing for that?

-There were some claims that people were trying to vote and then got turned away because the polls closed at 7 p.m. And they tried to vote, but they were turned away.

-And then from the other side, the Republicans tried to say, What about Governor Sisolak and him closing government offices?

-Yes, in Northern Nevada he closed some state offices because of the weather.

And they tried to say like, Oh, he's prohibiting people's votes.

But that had nothing to do with polling locations.

Those were all open.

-Weather, though.

Inclement weather does make a difference on Election Day, correct?

-Traditionally, it helps Republicans a little bit.

But you know, now you've got so many different ways-- -Why?

-They tend to be much more regular voters, tend to be older, more established, less transient.

All those things go into more likely to vote.

And you see that across the board, right?

Republican turnout is always a little better than Democratic turnout.

And so weather is just another variable that goes into that.

-What about-- What were you going to add?

-Yeah, but it tends to have less of an effect in competitive races, right?

So these are the types of races where people are already engaged and enthusiastic to go turn out and vote.

So in those types of races, like in Nevada, weather tends to have less of an effect on turnout.

-What do we know about turnout so far for this election?

-I mean, it depends how you-- what you mean by "turnout."

If you talk about raw numbers, it could be good, you can say it's good.

If you're saying in terms of the percentage of registered voters, not very good.

In terms of voting eligible population, I'm not sure.

So it kind of depends.

I think overall, turnout is usually considered lower than, say, compared to the last midterm election, 2018.

So that's one way of just comparing it to the last midterm.

That was part of the blue wave election cycle.

So that had very high turnout in Nevada.

And just comparing it to that, I mean, it seems like it's not as good as that election cycle.

-When did Nevada institute automatic voter registration?

Because when we implemented automatic voter registration, now everybody goes to the DMV and is registered.

So that total act, like registered voters numbers, shoots up even though probably those people weren't going to vote anyway because they never planned to vote, you know?

So I think that maybe skewed some of the numbers.

-Right.

So that's the thing.

It is apples and oranges.

So voter turnout, in 2018, was around 60% in Clark County, to think about Clark County.

This so far, like before counting all these mail-in ballots, was at 45%.

Huge discrepancy.

But again, the denominator is different, right, because now we have all these, you know, automatically registered voters that are in there.

So it's gonna be lower, right?

But still, 45% is pretty low.

And that was the question, Okay, well, how many mail-in ballots are out there?

So people started calculating stuff out.

I mean, you mentioned a number like, some people thought maybe 200,000.

So actually, yeah, if you think that voter turnout should be 60% this election cycle as well, that is a 200,000 ballot difference, right?

So I think that's where some people were getting that number.

But again different, apples to oranges.

So it's kind of hard to compare.

But, in general, it seems a little lower than 2018.

-The other point to remember here is you have about a half million people in Nevada who are age eligible who aren't registered at all, right?

So that, you know-- With political scientists, we tend to look at that age eligible number, right?

And that drives down that turnout quite a bit as opposed to just looking at the registered number.

-So we do have to wait for the mail-in ballots to come to determine voter turnout for accurately.

The state of Nevada, in general, how do we do?

-We're below national average.

Even as much money and as competitive our races are, we generally fare lower than the national average in turnout voter participation.

-And what is the reason behind that?

-People don't move here to become civically engaged.

They come here to make money.

But you have a very transient population.

You have-- Particularly, Clark tilts a little bit under.

You have a large immigrant population, right?

Education level is very low.

All the sort of things that we think drive turnout systematically, we tend to be on the lower end of those.

-Let's talk about those provisional ballots because, well, I would like to find out how much of a difference you think they could make.

But first off, what are they, April?

-So provisional-- Someone might have a better explanation than me.

Jessica might.

Provisional ballots are-- So if you went to the voting booth and you tried to vote but you weren't in the voter rolls for some reason or there's some kind of issue, then you can cast a provisional ballot that says, I would like to cast my ballot on Election Day because I have to cast it by Election Day, but then I will figure out the ID issue later.

Or I will, like, prove my identity.

I'll prove that I'm eligible to vote after Election Day, and I'll put my ballot in first.

So that's kind of, yeah.

-And what are we hearing about how many are out there?

-I think Joe Gloria said the other day that it was like at least 10,000.

But he wasn't sure of the exact number, I believe.

-Okay.

-But that will take time to, you know, verify and get all those sorted out.

-In 2020, those broke for Republicans as well.

-I wonder why.

-They had a better operation in 2020 than the Democrats.

Democrats were late in the game getting their GOTV out there.

That's how Buck won her Senate seat, on those provisional ballots.

-And these are also all in-person voting.

So you can't mail in a provisional ballot.

So again that, you know, contributes to that Republican lean of these provisionals.

-And if we're talking 10,000 ballots, how significant could that be?

-I mean, there's like 80,000 mail ballots.

So comparatively, you know-- -You're talking about in Clark County?

-Yeah, in Clark County or whatever.

-Okay.

-So, you know, if you let extra, yeah.

-And it may matter down ticket, right?

I mean, perhaps not if we went to the effect of the top of the ticket, but then some of those very tight Assembly races and State Senate races, right?

You could see that.

Maybe that's exactly what happened in 2020.

-Yeah, there's like a 300-number difference between two candidates in Assembly.

So it should be interesting.

-And in terms of delay, how are the provisional ballots impacting that?

-I mean, I don't think that there will be too much more of a delay with the provisional ballots.

I mean, there's already a delay.

Not really delay, but it's already taking long.

So I don't think the provisional ballots will take much longer.

-But they do take extra steps to process.

-Right.

-And there's already the curing process too.

-Will you talk about that, the curing process.

-Yeah.

So basically, if you turn in your mail-in ballot, if the signature does not match what the department has on file, they'll reach out and contact you.

And you'll have to just talk to them and prove that, That was me that submitted that ballot.

And that takes a little bit of time too.

-The Clark County's hearing process is pretty solid it seems like.

I think there's like an electronic way to do it, and there, you know-- I think it's luckily not too hard.

It is an extra step, but for voters, it's a pretty good step.

It's not-- -That was the subject of a lawsuit as well, right, who had monitored those?

-Yeah.

-Who would monitor the curing process?

-Mm-hmm.

-Any talk about, Let's improve this process so that we get results quicker, or does anybody-- Do any lawmakers care?

-You know, it's one of those things that comes up every two years, right?

So it's a hard thing to invest in a lot of government resources, right?

Reminds me of when I go to the legislature.

It's, Why isn't there more staff here to write bills?

It's because it's a really specific skill.

And once you train someone to do it, it's over.

So you have that, and then you have these people, your employees, what do they do for the rest of the year?

So I think that that tension there, but I think, you know, the degree that we're gonna keep mail balloting and the administrative structure catches up to it, I think will get a little bit smoother.

But you know, if we're gonna allow four days after, we're not going to get our results in close races until we get past that four days at a minimum.

-There's like a balance between, I think, access and quick turnout or quick processes, you know?

The way the process is now, it's so easy to vote here.

Anybody could just get their mail-in ballot and turn it in on Election Day.

They could show up not registered on Election Day, get registered and vote.

So it's so easy to vote, and that, in the same time, it does make it a little bit harder to get a turnout really fast.

-With how close the Senate race is right now in Nevada.

Again, this is Thursday, two days after the election.

I think Laxalt leads about 16,000 votes.

With it being that close, we've got tens of thousands of ballots estimated to still be coming in.

Anybody anticipate a runoff like what we're seeing about to happen in Georgia?

-Well, Georgia's is mandated, right?

If someone doesn't get to 50%, there's gonna be an automatic runoff there.

I think, what Nevada's statute is 0.5% is an automatic one that if someone can pay for it, or recount as opposed to the runoff.

I don't see that happening.

-Anybody differ on opinion on that?

-No.

-No.

-I think we're all thinking that Cortez Masto is going to pull ahead as we count these mail-in ballots.

But different story for Sisolak because he's down by 30-some thousand-- -Thirty-four, yeah.

- --votes, and that might be too much.

But again, that kind of depends on what Gloria is gonna-- what Clark County, you know, what they're gonna say as far as how many mail-in ballots they've received from USPS today.

So again, things are-- We're not 100% sure.

We're kind of guessing right now, but these are, I think, are all of our best guesses.

-Are we able to tell what issues ended up getting people to the polls thus far?

-Well, I think clearly you have, you know, a lot of criticism of the Democrats hammering the abortion issue.

That made a difference.

I think election integrity made a difference, right?

And those numbers, I think, played to the youth vote.

And that came out a little bit stronger than I think a lot of people anticipated.

But you know, so there's always that tension between the economy here.

But if you look into the Republican message, they didn't have a fix for inflation.

It was just sort of a point the finger, like what are we going to do to fix it?

We never sort of heard that part of it.

I think the crime was certainly the Republicans pushed that, and it's a little hard when you have the Sheriff of the biggest county as your gubernatorial candidate to make that case.

-Yeah.

Dan?

-So I think, yeah, it's like the economy and abortion, right, seem to be the driving issues.

And we kind of saw that the entire campaign.

And, yeah, but the question that we had was, is an issue like abortion strong enough of an issue to really mobilize the Democratic base?

And it seems like it might have.

And this is not also just looking nationwide, right?

Just looking into that, there really wasn't the red wave people were expecting.

I mean, we can go into details of, like, what might have contributed to that, but one is more Democrats maybe turned out to vote than was expected, you know, because of abortion.

And in a lot of states, they had, you know, initiatives to protect abortion, right?

So that helped.

For instance, I think in Michigan, helping Whitmer win reelection as governor there.

So I think, yeah, you saw abortion as an issue that maybe isn't a winning issue for Republicans taking a hard line, pro-life position because a lot of moderate Republicans don't necessarily feel that way.

And a lot of independents surely don't feel that way.

So that might have been an issue that really hurt Republicans nationwide.

-We have run out of time, but thank you so much for all of your input.

And thank you for joining us from wherever you are watching.

For the latest election results, visit vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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