Self-serving lawmakers quash sensible plan to save money on elections

The municipal elections, the ones you probably didn’t vote in, cost you a cool million this year.

Only 83,674 voters went to the primary and general municipal elections, a pitiful turnout. Divide the cost of the two elections by the number who voted, and it cost the cities in Clark County almost $12 per voter.

One easy way to save money would be to shift the municipal elections now held in odd-numbered years and piggyback them onto the federal, county and state elections held in even-numbered years. That would save taxpayers an estimated $1.5 million in election costs every other year. Common sense, right?

Saving money isn’t the only benefit. Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax is positive voter turnout would be higher. (With turnout ranging between 8 percent and 15 percent, it couldn’t go much lower). Gubernatorial elections get about 60 percent turnout, and in presidential years turnout is as high as 80 percent countywide. So put the municipal races on those ballots and, automatically, more people are likely to vote.

Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, had such a logical cost-saving bill. Of course, it went nowhere in the 2007 Legislature.

Senate Bill 149 passed unanimously in the Senate. Northern Nevada senators, who represent an area where municipal and other elections already are held in even-numbered years, couldn’t believe the five cities in Clark County waste money and time by splitting the elections.

Political selfishness killed SB 149 in the Assembly.

The practical idea of saving money plummeted into the dumper when political self-preservation was at risk.

This bill died because leaders in the Assembly, both Democrats and Republicans, didn’t like it and didn’t care whether it would save the cities they represent money.

Why would this be a universally good idea in the Senate and a predominantly bad idea in the Assembly?

Putting more candidates on the ballot the same year makes it harder for candidates to raise money because they’d be in competition for campaign donations. For Assembly members running every two years, more competition for campaign dollars is not desirable. (I also have a theory that political consultants, the ones who help get the Assembly members elected, need some off-year income, and that might be another reason it died.)

In the Assembly Elections, Procedures, Ethics and Constitutional Amendments Committee, the bill had a hearing; then Chairwoman Ellen Koivisto, D-Las Vegas, used her power and didn’t bring it up for a vote, even though she said she personally liked the idea.

Koivisto said she killed the bill because “I didn’t feel we should arbitrarily say this is the way it’s going to be.” She said Boulder City also argued against it because residents there like to be able to vote on ballot questions every year, rather than every two years.

She wanted an interim study so that the cities involved — Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite — could say what they wanted.

Her second, some would say more compelling, reason: Republican and Democratic leaders in the Assembly didn’t like the bill. Too many people would be campaigning at one time. “I’m not sure it would pass the Assembly,” she said.

Cegavske, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections who has seen her bill fail twice now, said she would bring it back in 2009.

“I pushed and pushed,” Cegavske said. “But what made me mad is that this was a bill with no opposition in committee, but behind the scenes some of the cities said they didn’t want it.”

The biggest issues raised in the committee hearing also were motivated by political self-preservation: How to change the dates without cutting out part of anybody’s term. The answer was to allow municipal politicians to serve an extra year before the elections were synchronized.

The argument that wasn’t made on behalf of the bill is probably the most compelling: In odd-numbered years, there would be a blessed period without political signs polluting the landscape all over Clark County.

Wouldn’t that alone be the right reason to change the election dates?

In the battle between savings and self-preservation, the taxpayers lost and the politicians won, a too-familiar story at so many levels.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.