2020 presidential ballot in Nevada
With its six electoral votes, Nevada is one of the seven battleground states that likely will determine the next president of the United States. By all accounts the race is pretty close in the Silver State. The latest poll shows Democrat Kamala Harris with a 1% edge over Republican Donald J. Trump, 47% to 46%, well within the proverbial statistical margin of error.
So anything could happen. But as someone New to Las Vegas who has studied Nevada election trends, I’m here to tell you that Harris has a secret weapon in her favor unique among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, especially if the race stays close. A nearly half-century-old law requires that the ballot for every statewide race give voters the option to choose “None of These Candidates.”
Along with another law that prohibits write-in candidates, it is an article of faith among devotees of Nevada politics that the NOTC option draws far more disenchanted Republican voters than it does disenchanted Democratic voters. The GOP simply hates it, which is why in the past the party has gone to court–unsuccessfully–to get the line eliminated. But Republicans are not challenging it in court this time around.
The full power of NOTC was on display two years ago in the 2022 U.S. Senate race. With three third-party candidates, that contest mainly was between two former Nevada attorneys general, Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, seeking a second term, and Republican challenger Republican Adam Laxalt, bearer of a politically resonant family name. Out of 1,018,850 votes cast, Cortez Masto bested Laxalt by 7,928 votes.
NOTC drew 12,411, far more than the difference between Cortez Masto and Laxalt. (I predicted the impact of NOTC two weeks before the election.)
Nor was that her first NOTC rodeo. In 2016, she beat Republican Joe Heck, a sitting Congressman, by 26,915 votes. NOTC drew 42,257 votes.
It’s been a lot closer than that. If you’re one of the more than 50 million people flying through here this year, you patronized what is now called Harry Reid International Airport. It’s named for the long-time U.S. Senator and Democratic majority leader who died in 2021 just two weeks after its renaming. But Reid wasn’t always such a political heavy hereabouts. Running for his third term in 1998, he beat Republican John Ensign, also a sitting Congressman, by a scant 401 votes. NOTC received 8,011 votes, 20 times Reid’s margin of victory.
In his two previous races for President, Trump failed to carry Nevada. In 2016, he lost to Hillary Clinton by 27,702 votes. NOTC drew 28,863, actually a little more. In 2020 NOTC wasn’t a factor. Joseph R. Biden out-polled Trump by 33,596. NOTC attracted only 14,079 votes. (I should note Laxalt was a front man in Trump’s wildly unsuccessful legal efforts, replete with poorly written briefs and little evidence, to challenge Biden’s win in Nevada.)
NOTC found itself in the news earlier this year as Nevada Republicans conducted a party-run Iowa-style caucus for the presidential run while the state ran a traditional primary election. With Trump not on the primary ballot, his last rival, Nikki Haley, got 31% of the vote–but NOTC got 62%. “Nikki Haley is trounced by the ‘none of these candidates in Nevada’s Republican primary,” screamed the AP headline from coast to coast. She soon exited the race.
Why is the Nevada the only state with a NOTC option? Well, you can sort of thank Richard Nixon’s 1972 overwhelming victory over George McGovern for that.
In 1975–the year after Nixon was forced to resign the Presidency due to the Watergate scandal–Assemblyman Donald R. Mello, a conservative Democrat and veteran lawmaker from the Reno suburb of Sparks and a railroad conductor for the Southern Pacific who was chair of the body’s Ways and Mean Committee, introduced Assembly Bill 336 mandating NOTC in statewide races. The preamble stated the purpose was so “any voter may express his lack of confidence in presidential candidates or candidates for statewide office.”
Here’s how Mello explained his measure that day to a group of journalists that included a UPI reporter:
‘This will show whether or not the people are satisfied with the people running on the ballot,’ said Mello. He said in the past individuals have stayed away from voting because they didn’t like either candidate. ‘Thus would put confidence back in the people to return to the polls … They would be able to express their feelings if they weren’t happy about either candidate … If there were many ‘no-confidence votes,; it would serve as notice for the candidates ‘to clean up their act,’ Mello said. He said a number of ‘no confidence’ would show the public was dissatisfied and wanted changes. It will also put a stop to the winners claiming they have a mandate from the public. Mello cited the 1072 Presidential election where many persons did not like Richard Nixon but they were afraid of Sen. Gorge McGovern. He said it worked out to be an ‘against’ vote opposing McGovern which resulted in the Nixon landslide.
Years later, in 2008, Mello gave a more personal basis for the bill in an oral history on file with the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau:
President Nixon gave me that idea. When we were going door-to-door, I would find more people that knew me and said, “We would vote for you again–or for the first time—but we’re not going to the polls.” I said, “Why?” and they said, “Because we don’t feel that most of the people are worthy of our vote. we’re staying home. But I said, “If you don’t give me a vote, I may not be back,” and they said, “”Well, that’s the way we feel about it.” So I kept a list, and I asked each one of the, if they could go to the polls and vote no instead of voting for someone–just note no so their vote would be registered–would you go then? I had to go back to many of them. I wrote their names down and their addresses. When I came up with the idea and went back and asked them, everyone of them told me they would. When I introduced the legislation in 1975, I had it on everybody’s race: ‘none of the above.” My colleagues hated it, but I was very successful in convincing them that we ought to put it on the ballot somewhere. So we put it on statewide offices.
The bill would apply in primary elections and even in races where there was only one candidate. Mello initially wanted any race where NOTC led the pack to result in a new special election. But to gain support from worried colleagues, he agreed to make it advisory: The NOTC totals would not count in determining the winner but would be required to be listed in all tabulations of votes as a sort of public shaming.
Mello’s bill picked up four co-sponsors, all Democrats. It passed and was signed into law two months later by Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, also a Democrat.
Were the Republicans rolled? Nevada is a state with relatively little ticket-splitting (voters choosing candidates from different parties). While Republicans might have seen this as a way of keeping their faithful at the polls in the wake of the Nixon disillusionment, Democrats might have thought NOTC would become a convenient way of allowing certain voters–i.e. angry Republicans not prepared to back a Democrat–a way of not voting for a Republican.
Nearly four decades later, the GOP woke up. In 2012 several functionaries backed by the Republican National Committee sued in Nevada federal court to eliminate the NOTC line, claiming it violated the U.S. Constitution. A district judge in Nevada actually ruled for the Republicans, but a federal appeals court quickly paused that ruling and later dismissed the case on grounds the plaintiffs lacking standing to sue. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene.
Fast forward to 2024. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now off the ballot in Nevada. So is the Green Party, just axed by a 5-2 vote of the Nevada Supreme Court because it used the wrong nominating petition form even though it had been suggested by the inept (and Democratically controlled) Secretary of State’s Office. Both might have drawn lefty votes in Nevada from Harris. (The Green Party has filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.) Still on the ballot are candidates running under the label of the Libertarian Party and the Independent American Party–which both tend to draw from the right, where Trump resides. So NOTC really looms large.
Back in 1975, when Don Mello’s bill was pending in the Legislature, it received strong support from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We think people would like it known they voted for the lesser of two evils–when that it the case,” the paper declared in an editorial headlined ” ‘No confidence’ a lesson.’ ” “This bill places a powerful weapon in the hands of the people and we like that.”
In an ironic twist, the paper is now owned by the family of Miriam Adelson, one of Trump’s biggest donors. Its editorial page has been a daily battering ram aimed first at Biden, and now Harris. However, the R-J doesn’t have the circulation or clout it used to. But NOTC does.