LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As voters head to the polls for Election Day, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar has been working to speed up the counting process to learn who won each race.
In 2022, Nevadans and the rest of the country had to wait until the weekend before learning Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto defeated her Republican challenger Adam Laxalt.
It was a similar story in 2020, when Nevadans again had to wait until the weekend to learn the state went to President Joe Biden.
Aguilar has worked to make 2024 the year that changes.
"Things will be faster because counties have invested in resources for machines and for people to build the capacity to be able to process the significant number of mail ballots that they're receiving in early vote and on Election Day. Capacity was the big issue," he said.
He says that lack of capacity prevented counties from being as efficient as possible.
Once he came into office, his team reviewed the statutes and reminded county election departments about the rules.
"One was encouraging the counties to start processing 15 days before the election because if they start processing, that buildup doesn't happen. They don't get a bottleneck," Aguilar said.
"Were they just not doing that before?" I asked.
"No, they weren't, because they were so focused on the actual management of elections that elections had changed from 2020 to 2022, that they hadn't really adopted some of the things that had been allowed by the legislature, so now that we know these laws exist, we can then implement some of those processes," he said.
He said the other big thing is that county clerks and registrars can begin tabulating early voting and returned mail ballots at 8 a.m. on Election Day.
"Which then about 6 p.m., they will transfer that data to the Secretary of State's Office to aggregate and then be able to release once the last voter in Nevada has voted," Aguilar said.
He tells me that process led to having early voting results for the June primary within 10 minutes of the last voter casting a ballot.
"Given all of that," I asked. "How soon should we start getting results?"
"Look, the June primary had a smaller number of voters," he said. "We're looking at probably a 75% turnout of 2 million registered voters in Nevada. That's a significant number of ballots to process and to tabulate, so we're hoping that we can have the systems we need to make sure that we can get the results out as soon as possible."
"So let me rephrase it... what would success look like for you when Nevada has its election results?" I asked.
"If we could meet the expectations we set during the June primary. but again, knowing that turnout is going to be so significantly high, we're going to work to get as close to election night as possible," he said.
