Uncle Sam rides the Douglas County Republican Party entry in the June 8 Carson Valley Days Parade.
Photo by Kurt Hildebrand.
The 2024 primary election is officially over after county commissioners canvassed the vote on Thursday.
Only 32.54 percent of Douglas County’s voters turned out for the election, according to Clerk-Treasurer Amy Burgans.
That amounted to 14,735 of the county’s 45,393 voters and was the lowest turnout for a primary election in the county in the 21st Century.
Burgans told Douglas County commissioners that turnout was very low across the Silver State.
She said she plans to suggest to the 2025 Nevada Legislature that early in-person voting be reduced to a single week.
“We had more people vote in person on Election Day than over the two weeks of early voting prior,” she said. “Something is going to have to change.”
She said that reducing early in-person voting to one week would save money on election workers, who must be at the polls whether anyone is using them or not.
Mailed ballots were the most popular means of casting a ballot in the primary, despite having almost two-thirds of them go unreturned.
“I’m not opposed to mailed ballots,” she said. “A huge part of Douglas County voters want to have them. We had 28,106 that we sent that taxpayers paid $5 for that never came back to us and were never used.”
The Nevada Secretary of State’s Office does reimburse the county for some of the roughly $140,000 cost of mailing ballots out, she said.
She said that 2,799 of the mailed ballots were returned as undeliverable by the Post Office, which cost the county both to mail them and for a return postage fee.
“The conversation has to be had across the parties to make it work for voters, but also be fiscally responsible to taxpayers,” she said.
She estimated taxpayers were paying roughly $45 a vote under the current law.
Slightly more than half of the mailed ballots were returned through the Post Office, while the rest were dropped off by voters.
Having the roving ballot box may also require some adjustments.
“There were days out at certain locations where we had two election workers stay with the drop box for three hours and only receive two ballots,” she said. “We’ll be re-evaluating how we do things.”
Burgans said she expects the turnout will be far greater for the November Presidential Election.
“I know the general will be different,” she said. “In general, we hit 87 percent, but I’d like to see Douglas County break that.”
Lincoln County had the highest turnout in the Silver State with 42.37 percent of its 2,563 active voters casting a ballot.
Statewide, turnout was 19.2 percent, according to the Nevada Secretary of State.
Three Douglas County commissioner seats were on the ballot and two of those were resolved in the primary.
Commissioner Mark Gardner defeated challenger Michael Tanner 6,415-2,440. The second try was the charm for District 5 candidate Nate Tolbert, who defeated Janet Freixas 6,098-3,005.
Commissioner Danny Tarkanian repelled a challenge by former Douglas County Republican Party Chairman Jim McKalip 5,240-4,535. Tarkanian will go on to face nonpartisan Brian Dempsey and Democrat Jason Garrett Gibson in the general election in November. Cecil Stodieck was the last nonpartisan to be elected a county commissioner in 1946. The last Democrat was H.C. Lampe in 1942.
