The groups supporting the ballot questions to enshrine abortion rights in the Nevada Constitution and implement ranked-choice voting and open primaries raised millions of dollars from July through September, campaign finance reports released this week show.

Much of the funding driving the marquee ballot questions is coming from large, out-of-state groups — many of whom do not disclose their donors — that are working to advance these policies via ballot measures in multiple states and are fueling high-dollar TV ad blitzes.

Vote Yes on 3 — the group formed this year to support Question 3, the ranked-choice voting and open primaries initiative — raised $13.9 million in the third quarter, bringing its total haul this year to nearly $20 million. Meanwhile, Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the group leading the effort to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution, raised more than $6.6 million.

The massive hauls underscore the financial prowess of the initiatives and the obstacles facing those trying to stop both efforts. The group opposing Question 3 raised just over $2 million in the third quarter — the entirety of its 2024 haul — while no PACs have raised money to oppose the abortion ballot question.

Question 3 aims to amend the state Constitution by requiring most partisan elections 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 in 2026, with the top five vote-getters advancing to the general election, where voters would rank candidates by order of preference.

The nearly $14 million haul from Vote Yes on 3 is lower than the $17 million brought in by the group supporting Question 3 in 2022 during the same three-month period (the question narrowly passed then and needs to pass again this year to go into effect). This latest haul was exclusively from donations by Article IV, a Virginia-based group that bills itself as a nonpartisan group focused on improving democracy, and Unite America, a philanthropic fund dedicated to election reform.

Meanwhile, the $2 million raised by the group opposing Question 3 — Protect Your Vote NV — came exclusively from the Nevada Alliance, a left-leaning group that does not have to disclose its donors (commonly referred to as a “dark money” group) but has donated millions to Democratic initiatives in Nevada. It’s an ironic funding source for the group, given that it has released ads condemning Question 3 for being funded by “out of state special interests,” even though the Nevada Alliance has received money from national dark money groups, The Indy found earlier this year.

The abortion ballot question would need to pass this year and in 2026 to amend the state Constitution. It would not change the state’s law — which allows abortions through 24 weeks into a pregnancy — but enshrining it in the Constitution would make it harder to overturn.

The $6.6 million raised by Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom also has ties to left-leaning dark money groups, including receiving $2 million from the Advocacy Action Fund and $312,000 from the Tides Foundation. The group also received $250,000 from Elaine Wynn and $50,000 from director Steven Spielberg.

The third most consequential ballot question this year would require voter ID in Nevada — either a valid photo ID while in-person voting or including part of a personally identifiable number while voting by mail — though far less money went into the widely supported initiative. 

The Nevada Voter ID Coalition — a newly formed group chaired by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo — raised $18,000. Earlier this year, the group was called the Better Nevada Ballot Advocacy Committee, and it raised $1.4 million to help qualify the question for the ballot, with support from the Las Vegas Sands, whose largest shareholder is GOP megadonor Miriam Adelson.

The PAC behind the voter ID ballot question — Repair the Vote, which is led by former Clark County GOP Chair David Gibbs — raised $32,000, much less than its fundraising hauls earlier this year. And another new PAC opposing the question — the Nevada Voter Freedom Alliance — received just $500 from Battle Born Progress, a progressive group behind the PAC.