Voters in last week's primary elections decided who will serve in several legislative seats in Clark County. They also decided who will be the next district attorneys in Washoe, Esmeralda and Nye counties, who will serve as county commissioners in Douglas, Eureka, Lander, Lincoln, Lyon, Pershing, Storey and White Pine counties, and who will serve in other partisan county offices in 14 of Nevada's 17 counties.

No, I'm not talking about unofficial faits accomplis, such as David Flippo's likely election as a freshman congressman in Northern Nevada's very Republican-leaning 2nd Congressional District or Democratic Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar's repeat performance against the same "Marchant" of election phantasms he far too narrowly beat in 2022.

Instead, I'm talking about a quirk in Nevada's election laws that allows a winner of a partisan primary election to become the only general election candidate when no candidates from other parties file for the same race.

So, for example, when you have two or more Republican candidates run for district attorney and no Democrats, minor party candidates or nonpartisans file for that office, the winner of the Republican primary election becomes the district attorney — which is what happened in Washoe, Esmeralda and Nye counties. Or, alternatively, when you have two or more Democrats file to run for state Assembly or Senate and no Republicans, minor party candidates or nonpartisans file, the winner of the Democratic Party primary for those seats automatically wins — which is why Edgar Flores, Miguel Dávila and Linda Hunt will represent Senate District 2, Assembly District 15 and Assembly District 17, respectively.

It wasn't always this way. As KRNV News 4 recently pointed out, before SB499 was passed during the 2015 session, the top two candidates from a single party used to proceed to the general election. 

In 2014, for example, three Republican candidates — Joshua Wilson, Mike Clark and Fonda Crandall — filed to run for Washoe County assessor. Since they were the only candidates to file, the top two candidates from that primary election advanced to the general election. Though Wilson received a plurality of the votes cast — he received more than 45 percent of the 23,017 votes cast in the primary election — he ultimately lost the general election to Clark, who received more than 52 percent of the 96,230 votes cast in the general election. 

If that same election were held under Nevada's present elections law, Wilson's 10,476 primary election votes would have denied nearly 100,000 voters the chance to decide who their next assessor would be.

A similar outcome nearly occurred in the closely fought battle for Assembly District 26 that year, which represented south Reno and Incline Village. Once again, three Republican candidates — Randy Kirner, Lisa Krasner and Robb Archie — filed to run for the office. Kirner, the incumbent, narrowly won a plurality in the primary election, receiving only 2,546 of the 6,059 votes cast. In the general election, more than 20,000 voters cast their ballots to decide who their next assemblymember would be. Of those, only 11 more voters preferred Kirner to Krasner.

Once again, if that election were held today, the 2,546 voters who elected Kirner in the primary election would have decided for over 20,000 general election voters, including several Democrats and nonpartisans, who their next assemblymember would be.

This didn't just happen to Republicans in 2014, either. During that same year, only two Democratic candidates, Richard Carrillo and Amy Beaulieu, filed for Assembly District 18, which represented southeast Las Vegas. Since only two Democrats filed for that office, both candidates skipped the primary election and went straight to the general election. Consequently, more than 7,000 voters were given an opportunity to cast their ballots in that race. To put that into perspective, only 1,069 Democrats voted in the two-way primary between Maggie Carlton and Jack Brooks in nearby Assembly District 14.

Once SB499 was passed in 2015, however, only partisan primary election voters were granted the opportunity to vote in elections in which candidates from only one party filed for office.

Five years after the bill's passage, 3,803 Republican primary voters decided for over 40,000 voters in Assembly District 19 in 2020 that Annie Black would represent their district. That same year, fewer than half of the roughly 5,000 Democratic primary election voters in Assembly District 20 decided for nearly 35,000 voters that David Orentlicher would represent their district. Additionally, fewer than 10 percent of the voters in Assembly District 36 also decided that Greg Hafen would represent their district during the Republican primary election that year.

The fact that small numbers of primary election voters are now deciding who will serve in various elected positions in Nevada is not surprising. Arguably, it's by design.

For starters, most voters can't participate in any given party's primary election. According to the most recent voter registration statistics published by the secretary of state's office, nearly 46 percent of Nevada's voters either lack a partisan party affiliation or are registered under a minor political party affiliation — either way, these voters can't participate in Republican or Democratic primary elections unless they change their party affiliation. Of the remaining voters, just over 27 percent can participate in Democratic primary elections while just fewer than 27 percent can participate in Republican primary elections. Republicans, however, cannot participate in Democratic primary elections, nor can Democrats participate in Republican primary elections.

Assuming 100 percent turnout, then, slightly more than 1 in 4 voters in Nevada would ever get a chance to decide such elections.

That, however, never comes close to happening. According to The Nevada Independent, turnout for this year's primary election barely exceeded 20 percent and primary election turnout hasn't exceeded 30 percent since 2010. Turnout in the 2022 general election, by contrast — the most recent nonpresidential general election — was greater than 54 percent. In 2024, meanwhile, general election turnout exceeded 72 percent. In 2020, turnout exceeded 77 percent.

Put the two together and it's a miracle even 10 percent — 1 in 10 — of Nevada's voters have had a meaningful say in some of our elections since SB499 was passed.

There have been attempts to give general election voters their voice back. In 2017, Assms. Ira Hansen (R-Sparks), James Ohrenschall (D-Las Vegas), Skip Daly (D-Sparks) and Olivia Diaz (D-Las Vegas) sponsored AB226, which sought to overturn the section of SB499 that left the power to elect partisan candidates solely in the hands of partisan primary voters, even when candidates from only one party filed for office. Though the bill didn't advance that session, it was revived in 2019 as AB259 by the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections. In that session, the bill was passed by the Assembly but failed to pass the Senate.

Since the end of the 2019 Session, nonpartisan voter share has increased from 22.7 percent to 39.3 percent. Additionally, primary election turnout has decreased from 29.5 percent to 21.4 percent. Consequently, the number of voters who are participating in either partisan primary are declining. That's why fewer than 42,000 Republican voters decided on behalf of nearly 400,000 Washoe County voters — including myself, who participated in the Democratic Party primary instead — who our next district attorney will be. Fewer than 7 percent of Washoe County's voters — not even 1 in 10 — ultimately voted for the winning candidate, Wes Duncan (R).

Considering what the two DA candidates were saying about each other, it would have been nice to have been asked.

Fortunately, the Legislature possesses the power to undo the damage it inflicted on voters following the passage of SB499. All it needs to do is simply restore one of its aborted attempts to do just that from 2017 or 2019's recycle bin. Hansen, Daly and Ohrenschall are senators now and are likely to remain so — Hansen's running unopposed, while Daly and Ohrenschall represent predominantly Democratic districts. Perhaps 2027 will be the year they get the band back together?

This opinionated and partisanly mercurial voter certainly hopes so.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.