Despite predictable primary, Nevadans have good reason to go to polls

Gregory Bull / AP

Election workers process ballots at the Clark County Election Department, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022, in Las Vegas.

Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024 | 2 a.m.

The feeling of futility is understandable. There are times when today’s presidential preference primaries feel as though they don’t matter. Barely 0.3% (yes, that decimal place is in the correct spot) of registered voters in the United States have cast their primary ballot thus far, yet many of the nation’s traditional news outlets and social media influencers have already declared that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will be the nominees.

We can forgive the Democratic Party for all-but-coronating Biden — after all, he is an incumbent president. The last serious primary challenger to an incumbent was more than 30 years ago, in 1992, when Pat Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush. Even then, Bush secured more than four times as many delegates as Buchanan.

Trump’s apparent coronation is harder to explain. Not only is he not a true incumbent, but he has never won a national popular vote for any public office. Despite winning the Electoral College vote in 2016, he lost the national popular vote by nearly 3 million and throughout his time in office, he never received an approval rating greater than 49%. His inability to win the support of a majority of Americans was underscored by his incredible losses in the 2018 midterms and failure to secure a second term in the White House in 2020.

A deceitful manipulation of the endorsement process by the Nevada Republican Party and the Trump campaign will make Trump a laughingstock nationally but has all but guaranteed that he will receive Nevada’s GOP delegates. Even so, there is a still a viable path to the nomination for former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Moreover, polling shows that Haley would be a much stronger candidate than Trump in a head-to-head matchup with Biden.

By going to the polls today, voters in the Silver State have the opportunity to put Haley on that path, and to invigorate the Biden campaign with the energy needed to carry him through to November.

In short, despite intentional monkeywrenching by the state GOP and a coronation by Nevada Democrats, our votes still matter, but only if we exercise our power and cast our ballots.

Even without Nevada’s delegates, a large turnout for Haley in the Republican primaries would send a strong signal to the rest of the country that they should not abandon her campaign.

If Haley attracts more votes in the state primary than Trump does in the party’s caucuses, it would be clear to all that Trump’s delegates are illegitimately gifted to him by a rigged election, challenging Trump’s legitimacy and adding further evidence to demonstrate that a man who likes to whine about imaginary rigged elections is quite openly rigging an election to his benefit now. In that regard, Nevada is a preview for what Republicans in power might try to do across the country.

At the very least, if Haley receives substantially more votes in the primary than Trump does in the caucuses, it would reveal the depths of depravity that Trump is willing to go to in order to secure the nomination and how little he cares about a functioning democracy — or the will of the voters as expressed at the ballot box.

On the Democratic side, a strong turnout would prove that Democrats are willing to show up for this president even when they don’t have to, which suggests they’ll be out in force in November, giving Biden a viable path to the White House. Such optimism and excitement would undoubtedly increase volunteerism and donations in support of the Biden campaign. It would also put undecided Republicans in other states on notice that they are in for a fight this November — a fight that Haley is far more likely to win than Trump.

Setting aside partisan politics, Nevadans should turn out to vote in overwhelming numbers today because it is the only way to save America’s political system from extremists and ensure that our voices continue to be heard moving forward. Our elections officials have delivered proven safe, secure and accurate elections, and they have robust mechanisms to catch efforts to cheat.

If the number of Americans participating in the presidential preference primaries decreases, the power of each remaining voter increases. It’s a simple fact of our democracy: If you show up to vote, your voice is heard. Stay home and you hand your future to others to determine.

When enough people disengage, the extremists and conspiracy theorists can overpower the moderates who believe in good governance. When that happens, candidates like Trump no longer feel the need to appeal to the middle or to offer any information or details about their policy proposals beyond violent and conspiracy-laden rhetoric. Trump already has demonstrated that he feels no responsibility to anyone who doesn’t vote for him; he’s not interested in governing for all Americans. If we don’t all show up, participation in debates and other important opportunities to differentiate among candidates disappears and informed democracy risks being reduced to an empty shell of extremism.

Nevada has the power and the responsibility to do our part to prevent that type of democratic backsliding. It starts with voting in today’s primaries.