LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s dueling presidential caucuses and primaries this week are creating confusion among voters, and those casting ballots in the first contest Tuesday have the option of supporting “none of these candidates.”
Nikki Haley is running in Tuesday’s Republican primary, which won’t count for the GOP nomination, while Donald Trump is the only major candidate in Thursday’s Republican caucuses, which does. The split races have undercut the influence of the third state on the GOP calendar.
It also may have brought a ho-hum approach to Tuesday’s contests, where the day started with lower-than-expected voter turnout. In the first two hours after polls opened, officials said 183 people had voted in person in Washoe County, the state’s second-largest county by population. In Clark County, home to Las Vegas and Nevada’s most-populated county, 2,298 people voted in person during the same two-hour period. Nevada voters also have the option to vote by mail or before election day.
Jeff Turner, 65, came to the Reno Town Mall with a ballot checked off for “none of these candidates” — an option Nevada lawmakers decades ago added in all statewide races, and one that many Trump supporters may choose since the former president and GOP front-runner isn’t on the primary ballot.
Turner’s candidates of choice — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and then businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — also would not have been on the ballot had they stayed in the race, since they opted to participate in Thursday’s caucus. Turner is among those people who lament an increasingly likely rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.
“I think it’s my duty,” Turner said of voting in an election where his candidates of choice are not on the ballot. “I think we all have the right to vote, we ought to vote. And even if it’s none of these candidates, it’s at least stating where I’m at. And I’m hoping others will see that.”
Haley, a former U.N. ambassador, has rejected the Nevada caucuses as unfair and set up by the state party to deliver a victory for the former president. Her campaign balked at the $55,000 fee the Nevada GOP was charging candidates to participate in the caucuses.
“We have not spent a dime nor an ounce of energy on Nevada. We made the decision early on that we were not going to pay $55,000 to a Trump entity to participate in a process that is rigged for Trump,” Haley campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters on Monday. “Nevada is not and has not been our focus.”
Haley’s campaign dismissed any concerns about how she might fare in the symbolic primary and has instead focused on her home state of South Carolina and its Feb. 24 primary.
There will also be a Democratic primary on Tuesday that Biden is expected to easily win against author Marianne Williamson and a handful of less-known challengers.