New impetus for changes in Nevada election, campaign laws

Siobhan McDonough

Saturday, Feb. 3, 2001 | 9:58 a.m.

CARSON CITY, Nev. - Florida's presidential election nightmare has given new impetus to Nevada legislators' debates over election law and campaign finance reforms.

"The only other thing that'll overshadow election reform in this legislative session is reapportionment," said Susan Morandi, deputy secretary of state for elections in Nevada. "Election law, in general, will get a lot of attention."

For the most part, Nevada's September primary and November general elections last year went smoothly, Secretary of State Dean Heller said. Missing was debate over mismarked ballots and hanging chads.

"Could what happened in Florida happen in Nevada? Probably not. Our system is solid," he said. "But there is room for improvement in our election rules."

Heller plans to petition the Legislature for a "Democracy Fund" that would help counties using punch cards advance to optical scan vote-counting systems.

In addition to advances in technology, Heller and some legislators also want an update of Nevada's presidential Electoral College voting laws.

The secretary of state wants the 2001 Legislature to fund a rewrite of the election laws to make them more user-friendly, and others are pushing for reforms in campaign financing.

Seven of Nevada's 17 counties still use punch card ballots and nine have optical scan system.

Only one county, Clark County which encompasses Las Vegas, has state-of-the-art Direct Recording Electronic devices.

"The aim is to gradually replace all of the punch cards in the counties that still use them," Heller said.

A Direct Recording Electronic device is computerized, simple and useful especially for the elderly, according to election officials. Buttons light up next to each selection so voters can see who they voted for before casting the ballot. When voters press a master "Cast Vote" switch, ballots become final.

The DRE records votes and stores the selections. It can print out each voter's ballot without disclosing who voted for whom according to sequence.

Optical scan devices require voters to pencil-in bubbles indicating their selections. The paper is scanned through a machine which stores the vote in its memory. The optical scan makes few mistakes but costs more than punch cards, which have a higher potential for error.

The Electoral College changes being pushed by Heller, a Republican, would do away with Nevada's winner-take-all system that gave George W. Bush all of the state's four electoral votes in the 2000 elections.

Heller wants a system that aligns electoral votes with popular votes in each of Nevada's congressional districts, which will be increased to three in the 2004 presidential elections after the Census showed sufficient population increases.

Under Heller's plan, Democrat Al Gore would have received one of the four electoral votes because he beat Bush in the state's Las Vegas-based 1st Congressional District. Bush won the 2nd Congressional District and had a higher tally statewide, earning him the final two electoral votes.

Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said she supports such reforms because they'll make the Electoral College more representative.

That puts her at odds with Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who's skeptical about a change.

"I don't see it on our agenda. It's on a federal level," said Raggio, who served as a presidential elector in last year's elections.

There's also $250,000 in Gov. Kenny Guinn's proposed budget for the election law review. The goal, Heller said, is to "get down to the nuts and bolts and produce a product that the public can read."

Heller also is seeking $1.5 million to set up a statewide voter registration system. He said the new system would minimize the potential for fraud and duplication by linking Nevada's counties in a central voter database. Currently, each county maintains its own voter lists.

"There is no way of cross-checking voter registration. The secretary of state's office would act as a watchdog or a check-and-balance, making sure there are accurate lists kept in each county," Morandi explained.

Heller's efforts are strongly endorsed by the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, a citizen advocacy group. PLAN's Paul Brown said election law reform "has to be a top priority. Otherwise, it is an illusion we are a democracy. We need to modernize."

"We look like a Third World country," Brown said. "Absolutely we need to update the methods of voting. We have the technology and we have the money."

Others are pushing hard for campaign finance reform during the 2001 session.

Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, is targeting Nevada's sketchy reports on contributions and expenses - which he terms "the least useful ever."

"The reports were an all-time high in vagueness and were completely nonsensical. It never asked the question: how much money do you have on hand?" he said.

Beers plans to meet with Heller to come up with a "clear, sensible report with clear directions."

"I think we are in total agreement. The law needs to be changed," said Beers, who'd like the forms to ask how much campaign money candidates had at the start of an election year, who gave it to them, how it was spent and how is left at the end of the year.

Bigger changes are envisioned by PLAN, which argues heavy campaign donations by special interests give them too much political power in the state.

But Brown and other PLAN leaders have nothing in the works for this legislative session. They say a voter initiative might be the way to go.

"Campaign finance reform is a whole other can of worms that is desperately needed. Big money is calling the shots," Brown said.

"Special interests - such as gambling, mining, business, labor, retail - throw tons of money at their candidate and the other candidate doesn't get a chance," he said.

But to "take the guts out of special interests," Brown says it would take nearly $1 million to get a public initiative passed.

"That's the big irony," he said. "In order to take big money out of the campaigns, you have to put big money into the effort."