Voting has begun in Douglas County.
Just over 15.5 percent of Douglas County’s active voters had cast a ballot so far in the 2024 primary election, as of Wednesday morning.
According to the Clerk-Treasurer’s web site at govotedouglas.com, 6,681 ballots have been cast so far before Tuesday’s primary election.
Most of those were mail ballots accepted for counting with only 752 voters availing themselves of a voting machine with three days left of early voting.
Voting in this primary is running ahead of 2022 by a bit, though it’s still quite light. The Record-Courier reported 5,773 ballots had been cast as of the morning of June 8, 2022, with 1,283 voting in person.
Clerk-Treasurer Amy Burgans said the slow turnout isn’t limited to Douglas County.
“I chat regularly with the other clerks across the state and voter turnout, so far, is extremely low,” Burgans said. “If everyone is waiting to turn in their mail ballot on Election Day it will significantly delay any results.”
That light turnout will also make getting voters to cure ballots critical in tight races.
“We do have 60 mail ballots that need cures, and if our turnout doesn’t go up, every vote will be essential to the candidates.”
In 2020, Commissioner Danny Tarkanian won by 17 votes after contacting voters whose ballots required them to fix their signatures.
With a majority of the seats on the Douglas County Board of Commissioners up for election, there’s a lot at stake this year.
Because county commissioner is a partisan race, only the registered 22,688 Republicans can vote in the race. Of those, 21,721 are active voters while there are another 967 inactive Republicans as of May 1.
As of Wednesday morning, 3,994 Republicans had voted, a turnout of 18.38 percent.
Douglas County’s 7,943 active Democrats have a primary for U.S. Senate with 1,979 casting a ballot, or almost 25 percent.
The 13,246 active nonpartisans and minor party voters only have two offices on their ballot, University Regent and State School Board, which may explain a lackluster turnout of 5.3 percent.
Visit govotedouglas.com for more information.
