LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Ever since the state Legislature changed the law in 2020 — in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — every active registered voter in Nevada has received a ballot in the mail.
The idea was to keep people from crowding polling places, and possibly catching the virus.
But there's a cost to all that mailing, a cost that some voters may have shaved off the bill for the most recent presidential preference primary in February.
That's because a lot of voters decided to drop their ballots off at voting centers instead of putting them in the mail. And viewer Linda Gannon wrote in to ask us if dropping off her ballot saved the county the cost of postage.
The answer: It sure did, Linda.
All told, 129,715 people voted in the presidential primary in Clark County. The vast majority — 96,841 — chose to do so by mail, comprising about 75 percent of all the votes cast.
The majority of those voters — about two thirds, or 67,000 people — chose to fill out those ballots and put them right back into a mailbox. It's a safe option, especially since you can track your ballot online and learn from the county when it's been received and counted.
But some people don't trust the mail, or prefer to hand their ballot in directly to an election worker. For those voters, there are ballot boxes available at every voting center in the county, both during early voting and on Election Day.
In the February primary, about 30,000 people took advantage of those ballot boxes and dropped their ballots off. And at 67.8 cents per ballot, they saved Clark County more than $20,300 in postage costs.
The county encourages all voters to participate in the election, whether they vote by mailing in their ballot, showing up to a vote center during early voting, or waiting to vote in person on Election Day. Saving money on postage is just an added bonus.
If you have a question about Nevada politics or the 2024 election, write in to Ask Steve and we will try to answer it, online or on air.
