Flush with cash from wealthy outside donors, Nevada Voters First conducted an expansive media campaign in 2022 on behalf of Question 3, a ballot measure that would fundamentally change Nevada’s election system by allowing all voters to participate in primaries regardless of party affiliation and implement ranked-choice voting in general elections.

The group, which also garnered financial support from the Realtors, a teachers union and the gaming industry, ran myriad digital and television ads and poured millions of dollars into supporting the proposal, which qualified for the ballot. It passed with the support of about 53 percent of voters that year, despite opposition from prominent elected leaders of both major parties.

But as Question 3 returns to voters this year for the second and final time, it has reported only one significant contribution while spending nearly $900,000 this cycle — more than four times what it has raised. Grassroots supporters of the measure also say they haven't seen much activity from the group in the past year and a half and were unfamiliar with its strategies this year.

Clues to the ballot measure’s future may lie in a quiet reorganization. As the PAC’s bank account drained, organizers registered a new PAC, Vote Yes on 3, Inc., with the secretary of state’s office on March 15, and prebooked a nearly eight-figure ad buy ahead of the 2024 general election. 

“Question 3 hadn’t, yet, been assigned to the initiative by the state when Nevada Voters First was formed, so moving forward everything will be branded ‘Vote Yes on 3’ for the 2024 campaign,” representatives of the new PAC said in a statement provided to The Nevada Independent.

In the statement, representatives added that the high spending levels from the original Nevada Voters First PAC were for expenses incurred during the 2022 election and that the new Vote Yes on 3 PAC will be the primary fundraising and campaign entity moving forward.

Data from the political ad-tracking organization AdImpact indicates that the new PAC prebooked more than $9.4 million in ad buys in Las Vegas, Reno and on satellite from Sept. 10 through Election Day. Prebooking, however, doesn’t require the ad buyer to pay any money up front and the size of the ad booking can change at any point up to the scheduled start date.

It’s unclear how much funding the new PAC has available because Nevada law does not require PACs to report their cash on hand. Unlike candidates for office, Nevada PACs can accept unlimited amounts of money from a single donor. It’s common for groups supporting ballot questions to remain somewhat dormant in non-election years.

Jeremy Gelman, an associate professor of political science at UNR, said that it’s possible that organizers are maneuvering behind the scenes to close out the PAC's old books before moving to the new PAC.

“As long as the donors have a legal spending vehicle to use, there is no real disadvantage to changing to the new PAC,” Gelman said. “Switching to a new PAC at this stage, assuming it isn’t a signal of discord among Question 3’s main backers, is not a major change in how this advocacy campaign will unfold over the next 6 months.”

Protect Your Vote Nevada, a Democrat-linked PAC opposing the initiative, has also not reported raising any money since the 2022 election. The group spent around $150,000 last year after spending $2.2 million of the roughly $2.4 million it raised in 2022.

“It barely passed in 2022, Nevadans are right to be skeptical of it, and we are planning to run a campaign to beat it,” said Peter Koltak, a strategist with Protect Your Vote Nevada.

Sondra Cosgrove, a professor at the College of Southern Nevada who has advocated for the measure in a volunteer capacity, said she was concerned about the lack of engagement from supporters of the ballot question since 2022. The pro-Question 3 PAC’s Facebook and X accounts have not made any new posts since 2022.

“We just said, ‘OK, well, the grassroots is going to keep talking about this, we'll maybe catch back up with you in the summer of 2024,’” said Cosgrove, who also leads the civic engagement nonprofit Vote Nevada. “Since then, we really have not heard anything from the official campaign, from the funders. It's kind of just been a black box.”

How it would work

Question 3, which aims to amend the Nevada Constitution, would require most partisan elections in Nevada to move to a ranked-choice voting system. It would exclude the presidential election but include U.S. Senate and congressional races, legislative elections and statewide office positions.

If passed, primary elections in the state would open up to all voters regardless of party registration starting in 2026, with the top five vote-getters advancing to the general election, where voters would rank candidates by order of preference.

Voters could mark up to five preferences among candidates but could also choose to rank only one candidate or any number under five. Votes for “none of these candidates” would be required to be calculated, reported and made public but would not be counted to elect or rank any candidates for partisan office.

The biggest backer of Question 3 is Katherine Gehl, a Wisconsin-based businesswoman and founder of a nonprofit that promotes “Final-Five Voting,” the combined open primary and ranked choice voting system contained in Nevada’s ballot initiative. Gehl was the largest single donor to the pro-Question 3 PAC ahead of the 2022 election.

Representatives of the nonprofit did not respond to an email requesting an interview about whether it was still involved in the ballot measure effort.

Supporters say the system would allow more voters to participate in the electoral process, especially as nonpartisan voters make up the single largest group of registered voters in the Silver State, and make it harder for candidates with extreme positions to succeed.

The state’s Republican and Democratic parties have vehemently opposed the initiative, arguing it will confuse voters, be time-consuming and could lead to errors that result in eligible votes being thrown out. 

A poll conducted last year by the Guinn Center, a policy-focused nonprofit research group, indicates that many Nevada voters “lack awareness or understanding of the proposed reform and its impacts.” Specifically, the poll found that even after reading a sample ballot explanation of the Question 3 measure, 37 percent of respondents answered, “I don’t know” to a question about their opinion on the reform.

A plurality of the respondents (41 percent) indicated that they support Question 3, whereas 22 percent indicated they wouldn’t support it. The Guinn Center noted in its report that younger voters are generally more supportive of ranked-choice voting than older voters, and Democrats are more likely to support the voting method than Republicans.

Exploring the finances

Nevada Voters First has reported one contribution of more than $1,000 since the 2022 election, a roughly $207,000 donation in August 2023 from Unite America, a Denver-based group that supports nonpartisan election reform, including open primaries. The group (Gehl was a board member) helped shepherd millions of dollars to the PAC in the 2022 cycle.

Unite America did not respond to a question about its future spending plans for the ballot question.

The lack of contributions so far this election cycle marks a significant change from two years ago, when the PAC was first formed and had to begin collecting tens of thousands of signatures to qualify for the ballot while fending off legal challenges. In the first quarter of 2022, Nevada Voters First raised more than $2.25 million from more than a dozen donors, including a national group promoting ranked choice voting and several in-state groups, including the Nevada Association of Realtors, a PAC associated with the Clark County Education Association and Wynn Resorts.

Nevada Voters First has spent more than $800,000 this election cycle, mostly on consulting. It paid $240,000 to Winner & Mandabach Campaigns, a national consulting group focused on ballot initiatives. The PAC also paid more than $175,000 to Argentum Partners, a Las Vegas government affairs firm, for fees related to consulting, advertising, office expenses and special events.

The PAC also spent around $70,000 on polling from FM3 Research, a California-based group focused on surveys of candidates and ballot measures.

Officials with the new Vote Yes on 3 PAC did not file a campaign finance report for the first quarter of 2024. Under state law, a PAC is not required to file a report if it raised less than $1,000 or did not spend money supporting or opposing a candidate or group of candidates. The PAC was created just two weeks before the end of the reporting deadline — the next quarterly campaign finance reports are not due until July 15.

The Democrat-linked PAC opposing the ballot initiative has not reported raising any money this election cycle, but it has spent significantly less than Nevada Voters First.

What happens next?

Cosgrove said she was never on the campaign’s payroll but attended meetings with the group and helped organize support for the ballot measure.

After the ballot measure passed in 2022, she said the Question 3 organization let its campaign manager go, and “became very different.” Cosgrove said that the campaign told her and others that it would not do any advocacy during the 2023 legislative session and would re-engage with voters in the summer of 2024.

The creation of a new PAC came as a surprise, Cosgrove said, adding that she has “a lot of concerns” about the lack of grassroots engagement and worries broadly about the influence of outside funders and consultants in ballot measure campaigns (the president of the newly registered PAC, Neal Levine, is a former Nevada resident based in New York). Still, she said she and other volunteers have shared information about ranked-choice voting through presentations and community engagement efforts.

Levine, who is considered an expert on cannabis policy, ballot initiatives and independent expenditure campaigns, was previously involved in the cannabis legalization campaigns in Nevada. He declined an interview request.

She said she’d like to see more money spent on voter education about the ranked-choice process and in spreading awareness about the ballot question.

“I'm hoping that the official campaign reaches back out to us so we can maybe do a debrief as to what we've been doing for the last 18 months,” Cosgrove said, so the new group isn’t “sprinkling advertising all over the place that maybe doesn't align with what we're hearing.”