Candidates court early voters

Erin Neff

Monday, Oct. 21, 2002 | 11:06 a.m.

Voters crowded early voting sites this weekend as candidates entered their Get Out The Vote efforts for the remaining two weeks of the election year.

Campaigns typically focused on what they call GOTV -- Get Out The Vote -- in the last weekend before a general election. The idea is to court voters' support and make sure they have a ride to the polls.

But early voting spreads those efforts to a fortnight and gives candidates who believe they are behind in races more urgency -- and time -- to get every registered voter to the ballots.

At the end of the first two days of early voting, 13,851 had already cast ballots, with roughly half of those voters using the polls at four mall locations around the Las Vegas Valley.

Congressional hopeful Dario Herrera, a Democrat believed to be trailing Republican Jon Porter, used two weekend debates to give out his cell-phone number to allow voters to call him directly.

"I've gotten more than 400 calls," Herrera said Sunday evening. "Some people just want to know where I stand on the issues and others just wanted to see if I would answer the phone."

Herrera's campaign, meanwhile, was busy phoning voters and offering to help them fill out requests for absentee ballots, which are available until Oct. 29.

"We're renting vans to take people to early voting sites and we have an aggressive absentee ballot effort under way," Herrera campaign manager Achim Bergmann said.

Absentee ballots and early voting are expected to account for at least 50 percent of all votes this general election.

Porter campaign consultant Mike Slanker said early voting helps campaigns figure out which voters they should continue reaching out to.

"We've got hundreds of people dialing and checking the records of who voted early each day," Slanker said, referring to computer records of which voters cast ballots early.

At the early voting sites themselves, union representatives waved signs and wore shirts supporting candidates -- most of them Democratic.

Nevada Carpenter's Union members spanned out at early vote sites from North Las Vegas to Henderson with either Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley or Dario Herrera signs, depending on which district the site was at.

Assembly candidates also realize both the importance of getting their voters to the polls and courting the undecided.

In the primary Assembly District 37 was decided by nine votes, Assembly District 11 by 11 votes and Assembly District 28 by 60 votes. Several other races were within 200 votes, including the primary in a key State Senate race -- District 9.

"Every call is important," said Mike Slater, a Democrat running for Assembly District 13, as he greeted voters outside a Vons early voting site.

Nevadans for Responsible Law Enforcement -- the group which put the marijuana question on the ballot -- had volunteers out in force to help remind voters to vote yes on Question 9.

Outside Meadows Mall, several men wearing white NRLE shirts greeted those carrying sample ballots into the mall by asking if they had any questions about the initiative.

Meadows saw 1,779 voters over the two-day opening to early voting, trailing just the Galleria Mall's 2,493 voters for the biggest sites.