EDITORIAL: SOS Aguilar ignores the obvious cause of slow election results

Imagine going to the doctor after you break your leg. He quickly diagnoses the problem but refuses to put a cast on your leg. Instead, he prescribes painkillers and therapy. It doesn’t matter how skilled he is at applying those treatments. You would leave thinking he was a quack because he refused to address the obvious problem.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar is doing something similar with the state’s elections.

Nevada’s election results should be released faster, but measures that legislative Democrats have passed regarding mail ballots make that impossible. Look at last year’s Senate race. After election night, Republican Sam Brown had a lead against incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen. That lead evaporated as officials received and counted more ballots. The Associated Press didn’t declare Rosen the winner until late Friday evening, three days later.

This wasn’t a one-off. A similar scenario unfolded in 2022. Republican challenger Adam Laxalt had a 2-percentage-point lead the day after the election. On the Friday after the election, he still had a narrow lead over Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. The AP didn’t call that race for Ms. Cortez Masto until Saturday.

These delays are an embarrassment. As a swing state, Nevada regularly receives outsized national attention. The long wait makes Nevada look dysfunctional. And it’s cold comfort that California’s vote counting takes even longer.

Fortunately, quicker counting is possible. Florida, which is seven times larger than Nevada in population, released almost all of its November election results within a few hours of the polls closing. Like Nevada, it has mail ballots, early voting and Election Day voting. But it requires mail ballots be turned in by 7 p.m. on Election Day. In Nevada, mail ballots can trickle in for four days after the election and still be counted.

That’s the fundamental problem. Yet, there’s no evidence Mr. Aguilar wants to solve it. Instead, he wants to make the counting of late-arriving ballots more efficient. That’s great, but it’s beside the point. Officials can’t count ballots that they don’t have in hand.

Sadly, it looks as if Mr. Aguilar, a Democrat, is prioritizing politics over common sense. Democrats believe their partisans are more likely to vote by mail, so they’re just fine allowing ballots to be counted even if they’re received after Election Day. But it’s just as likely that voters would easily adapt to the new deadline.

Gov. Joe Lombardo wants a bipartisan approach to ensuring faster election results. Mr. Aguilar shouldn’t stand in the way. He should join with the governor to make that happen. The solution is obvious.