Just over three-quarters of Nevada’s registered voters have cast ballots in the past two presidential election cycles — 77 percent in 2016 and 78 percent in 2020.

A similar turnout this year would mean about two-thirds of Nevadans who will vote have already done so, while at least half a million more will vote either in person on Election Day Tuesday or by ballot. vote between now and then.

More than half — 50.4 percent — of eligible voters in Nevada had cast their ballots by the end of Friday, the last day of in-person early voting.

Cumulative mail and early voting during this year’s early voting period was slightly less widespread than four years ago, when 56% of the electorate voted by the end of early voting, according to Nevada Secretary of State reports.

Of the more than 542,000 early voters, 45.5% were Republicans and 27.7% were Democrats.

Another 26.8 percent of the vote was cast by others, including nonpartisans — a group that would make up the state’s largest political party if it were a party — along with the much smaller number of third-party Nevadans .

Of the 483,171 ballots received Friday, 40.2 percent were cast by Democrats, 30.3 percent by Republicans and 29.4 percent by others.

Of the total of just over one million votes — by mail and early in person — reported cast during the early voting period, Republicans accounted for 38.4% to Democrats 33.6% and nonpartisan/other parties 28%.

The Secretary of State’s Office will continue to release total mail-in ballots each day until Election Day.

In this year’s June primary, the single day when the most mail-in ballots were received was the day after Election Day, because so many people cast their ballots by mail or in a drop box. placement on election day.

So far, so good

“The process was without problems,” Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said during a news conference Friday, and his office is “we expect the same until election day.”

He said there were no cases that required the use of a new law passed in the 2023 legislative session to protect election workers from intimidation and election interference.

Mail-in ballots are already being counted, and county election officials can begin counting early in-person ballots on Election Day morning.

That means that on Tuesday, when the polls close, all early ballots and ballots received before Election Day will likely be counted, and the first announcement of results could include a substantially larger batch of votes than was the case in the past.

In 2020, Nevada’s presidential race was not called by media decision offices until the Saturday after Election Day because of the tight margins separating Donald Trump from Joe Biden and the significant number of mail-in ballots that had not been counted by end of election day. .

The officials are optimistic about the new procedures that the Nevada results won’t last as long this year. One of those officials is Lorena Portillo, the registrar of voters for Clark County, which is home to 72 percent of Nevada’s registered voters.

During Friday’s media briefing, Aguilar and his staff noted that the voting machines are not connected to the Internet, so ballots must be physically driven to the county elections office. It was pointed out to address security concerns, but also to highlight the delay in counting votes on election day, when ballots are driven from remote rural polling stations to county seats.

Despite new procedures designed to speed up the reporting of results, this does not guarantee that the winners of close races will be known on election night, a point underscored by the volume of mail-in ballots received on Election Day itself but not counted until later in the the mayor.

Aguilar encouraged voters to update their contact information at the address vote.nv.gov so counties can contact them directly if their signature is not accepted or there are other issues.

Aguilar also joked that his goal is to make the Nevada election go so well that no one outside of Nevada knows who he is.