Nevada ballot, 2024
It didn’t do Kamala Harris a lick of good. But for the second straight biennial election, Nevada’s unique, half-century-old law giving voters the explicit option to defiantly choose “None of These Candidates” has saved the bacon of a Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent.
Five days after the November 5 election, they’re still counting votes in the thinly populated Silver State. Still, nearly complete returns compiled by the Nevada Secretary of state’s Office show that despite Donald J. Trump’s solid presidential victory in Nevada (and the country), Democrat Jacky Rosen is winning her second six-year term in the Senate by 21,202 votes (out of 1,419,550 counted) over Republican challenger Sam Brown. But “None of These Candidates” is polling 41,638–nearly double Rosen’s margin.
It is widely believed by political experts that Nevada’s NOTC line overwhelming draws Republican voters rather than Democratic voters in partisan races. The GOP certainly believes that, which is why the party some years back challenged NOTC in court (unsuccessfully). Indeed, attracting unhappy Republicans was the somewhat-hidden intention of Democratic lawmakers who in 1975 enacted the measure into law. Helping give NOTC additional force: another Nevada law prohibiting write-in candidates.
Two years ago, NOTC worked its magic for Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, seeking her second U.S. Senate term against Republican Adam Laxalt, scion of a noted Nevada political family. Out of 1,018,850 votes cast, Cortez Masto bested Laxalt by just 7,928. But NOTC drew 12,411, far more than the difference between Cortez Masto and Laxalt.
In 2016, Cortez Masto won her first Senate term beat Republican Joe Heck, a sitting Congressman, by 26,915 votes. NOTC drew 42,257 votes.
Nor was she the first Democratic Senate office-holder to benefit from NOTC. In 1998 Harry Reid won his third term in the U.S. Senate by a scant 401 votes over Republican John Ensign. But NOTC pulled 8,011 votes–20 times Reid’s winning margin.
In September I wrote in this space about the possible impact of NOTC in the context of the presidential race. At the time polling showed Trump, who in his two previous races had lost Nevada (NOTC was not a factor), in a statistical tie with Harris. It is in close races that NOTC can make the difference.
But as it turns out, Trump easily carried Nevada, by more than three points over Harris.. Right now he is 45,935 votes ahead. NOTC is only pulling 18,992.
Why Brown faced more than twice as many NOTC votes in his race than Trump should be solid fodder for postmortems by the Nevada GOP, by all accounts not the most introspective of political organizations. But Brown, an injured war veteran and relative newcomer to the state who presented a solid conservative contrast to the pretty liberal Rosen, ran a simply terrible campaign. Against Rosen, who is Jewish, the Nevada Republican Central Committee mailed blatantly antisemitic campaign literature partly funded by big-name Jewish donors.
Here’s a quick review of why Nevada has the country’s only NOTC line. In the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation as president in 1974 due to the Watergate cover-up, Republican voters were disillusioned and not voting. At the same time, Nevada Assemblyman Donald R. Mello, a conservative Democrat and veteran lawmaker from the Reno suburb of Sparks who was also a railroad conductor, was aware that ticket-splitting wasn’t very popular in Nevada and saw a chance to allow nominally Republican voters to express their displeasure at the GOP and send a message.
At first he publicly cast it simply as a way to keep Republicans in the political system. But years later in a little noticed oral history Mello admitted his real goal was to get Republican voters in his district to vote for him, or at least not against him.But as it turned out, the final bill applied only to to all statewide races, general and primary, including federal ones for President and Senate, so Mello was a best an indirect beneficiary. The Democratic governor at the time, Mike O’Callaghan, signed the bill into law.
The NOTC totals do not count in determining the winner but are required to be listed in all tabulations of votes as an expression of public condemnation. Indeed, earlier this year, Nevada Republicans conducted a party-run Iowa-style caucus for the presidential contest 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 across the country. She soon exited the race.
In the 2014 Democratic primary for Nevada governor, there were eight candidates. The leader, Bob Goodman of Las Vegas, got 17,961 votes, or 24.8% of the total. But NOTC polled 21,725 votes, or 30.0% of the total. Since NOTC was not a person, the winner was Goodman, even though he lost to a phantom. His candidacy was irreparably damaged. In the general election Goodman lost by nearly a 3-1 margin to Republican Brian Sandoval.
The only other races on this month’s Nevada ballot with NOTC lines were for the relatively liberal Nevada Supreme Court. Candidates do not run with party labels for the six-year terms. All three contests featured unopposed incumbents, Elissa Cadish, Patty Lee and Lidia Stiglich, but each drew about 30% in NOTC polling.
Like Trump and Harris, as mandated by the awkward wording of Nevada law, individual NOTC tallies “shall be listed following the names of the candidates and the number of their votes in every posting, abstract and proclamation of the results of the election.” A public shaming for all of eternity to see.
Very insightful. Thanks.