LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — As Channel 13 continues our Path to the White House series, we're looking at the top issues on Nevada voters' minds heading into the presidential election. Among the topics we're examining leading up to November is the future of democracy.
Dissatisfaction with democracy
Recent polls and surveys show Americans are increasingly concerned for the future of our political system. It appears the growing political polarization and divisiveness could be contributing to the growth of registered nonpartisan voters in Nevada and across the country. This comes as Nevada prepares to put a proposal to overhaul our election system before voters this November.
You probably hear it all the time these days — people are tired of the bickering, the divisiveness, the polarization that's become seemingly synonymous with modern American politics.
"I think people are fed up with all the fighting and they’re just disillusioned and they don’t know who to vote for," Southern Nevada voter Paula Piccirilli said.
"I think getting the right people who are willing to work together is the most important thing and not just stick to party lines," fellow voter Don Piccirilli said.
Those are just some of the sentiments we heard from local voters as they cast their ballots in the June primary in Nevada. A new Pew Research Center pollfinds Americans' satisfaction with democracy has dipped by the double-digits since just 2021.
Ken Miller is an assistant political science professor at UNLV. He weighed in on shift of political social identities to ideologies.
"One of the things that happened is the parties changed. Both of the parties used to be knit together by sort of a social identity. That we thought of ourselves as Democrats, or thought of ourselves as Republicans because we grew up in a Republican household or Democratic household and that’s what our neighbors were. Now, the parties are organized less around our social identities and more around ideology. That gets more emotional."
The rise of the nonpartisan
Amid these rising tensions, Miller said more people are abandoning party altogether.
"One of the things we've noticed, this is very much true in Nevada, but this is a national process, is that people aren’t registering as Democrats or Republicans as often," Miller said.
In fact, registered nonpartisans now outnumber registered Republicans and Democrats in the silver state. Part of that is because of Automatic Voter Registration (AVR).
The way it works is eligible customers who come to the DMV to complete a transaction related to their license or vehicle registration can consent to being registered to vote.
If they don't select a political party at that time, they're automatically registered as nonpartisan. While this has contributed to the growth in nonpartisans, that's a trend we'd been seeing long before AVR was enacted in 2020. The graph below shows the increase in nonpartisans over the last decade.
Granted, Miller points out that many nonpartisans still vote along party lines, and just don't like the label of Democrat or Republican anymore.
"Political parties have this uniquely bad reputation in the United States, and that's unusual for democracies. In most democracies, political parties have a positive reputation. In America, they have sort of a negative reputation, because in the United States, we associate political parties with squabbling and not really with representation of people and things like that," Miller said.
Miller added, our system was built to accommodate two major parties, which could be why many nonpartisans still vote within the confines of parties. A prime example of that is our primaries, which include many partisan races that only registered Democrats or Republicans can vote in.
Ballot Question 3
However, major changes could be coming thanks to Ballot Question 3.
It'll go before Nevada voters this November and could drastically overhaul our elections. If approved, primaries would be open to all voters regardless of party registration. Then, in the general election, voters would be able to rank the top five candidates by preference. It's essentially a combination of open primaries and ranked choice voting.
Miller noted, that history shows, open primaries do tend to move things a bit more towards the middle.
"It does appear that extreme candidates within their primaries have a little bit more trouble in open primaries. That being said, if you have open primaries, it doesn't suddenly yield these huge turnout elections. People still don't turn out for a lot of primaries, just as they don't turn out for local elections. So it moves the needle a little bit towards moderation, but not a lot," Miller said.
Channel 13's senior political reporter Steve Sebelius moderated a discussion about Question 3 this spring, where College of Southern Nevada Professor Sondra Cosgrove said her students want the flexibility.
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"There's a lot of young people that are registering nonpartisan that do want to participate, but get blocked," Cosgrove said.
"A lot of those nonpartisan voters are my college students, and they're upset right now. They're very interested in issues, they're very devoted to certain issues right now' and they're very upset with both political parties because they don't think the parties are speaking to them and that they're ignoring their issues," Cosgrove went on to say.
On the other hand, governmental affairs attorney Bradley Schrager pointed out the confusion such drastic changes could bring for voters and the potential impact on political parties.
"This is going to weaken and attack political parties, for better or for worse," Schrager said.
"I am concerned that there is, at least for a while, going to be a situation in which we are not properly capturing the true choices of the community writ large because of issues with either confusion, or voter error, or spoiled ballots, or any of those things," Schrager went on to say.
Ballot Question 3 was initially approved by voters in 2022. If it passes again this November, it will go into effect in 2026.
At any rate, major changes could be coming to democracy in Nevada at a time when many say what we have now just isn't working.
