Speaker of the Assembly Jason Frierson, Majority Leader Teresa Benitez Thompson and member Britteny Miller, all Democrats, on Monday introduced AB126, recreating a presidential preference primary in Nevada.
The presidential preference primary would be held on the second to the last Tuesday in January of each presidential year for both major parties. But only Democrats could vote in the Democratic primary and Republicans in the Republican primary.
Minor parties and those registered non-partisan would not participate.
AB126 specifies that delegates to the state major party conventions reflect the results of the presidential primary vote in Nevada.
Nevada had a presidential preference primary for two years from 1953 to 1955. It was put back on the books by the 1973 Legislature and remained until, once again, lawmakers repealed it in favor of the caucus system in 1981 in part because of low turnout.
That wasn’t the only election bill introduced Monday. AB134, supported by all 15 Assembly Republicans along with Sens. Carrie Buck and Scott Hammond, was introduced.
The bill would repeal all the provisions of AB4 of the 32nd special legislative session that sent mail-in ballots to all active registered voters this past year and opened procedures for counting ballots. It would reinstate the tighter rules for absentee and mail ballots that existed before the special session.
It also would make it unlawful for a person to help a registered voter mark and sign an absentee or mail-in ballot and would effectively eliminate the ability of people to collect and file ballots for others.
Finally, AB129 by Republican Tom Roberts was introduced requiring political action committees to open an account and report contributions totaling more than $100, a sharp reduction from the $1,000 threshold in existing law, matching the requirements for individual candidates. It would also lower the threshold for reporting individual contributions, aggregate contributions by a contributor and other contributions from $1,000 to $100. Reporting of expenditure would also all be lowered to the $100 level in Roberts’ bill.
All three measures were referred to the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections for consideration.
