Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024 | 2 a.m.
The election last week in Nevada brought close results up and down the ballot — races for the White House, U.S. Senate, Clark County Commission and Nevada Legislature were decided by narrow margins.
One race, somewhat surprisingly, was determined by a landslide: Ballot Question 7.
The initiative, which would mandate presenting photo identification before voting in person or providing a Social Security or driver’s license number if voting by mail, passed with support from about 73% of voters, according to the secretary of state.
Among all seven ballot questions, it gained the most votes in either direction.
The Nevada GOP is championing the initiative, claiming it would bolster trust among voters disillusioned by the electoral process. It must be approved again by voters in 2026 to amend the Nevada Constitution to require voter ID.
The GOP’s election cynicism rose when then-President Donald Trump lost in 2020 to President Joe Biden, narrowly coming up short in a handful of battleground states. He lost here by 33,596 votes.
The GOP’s assault on election integrity included multiple legal challenges — in Nevada and other swing states — disputing the results. No widespread fraud was found and Nevada’s secretary of state at the time, Republican Barbara Cegavske, certified the results.
Former Clark County GOP chair David Gibbs filed the ballot initiative petition through his organization, Repair the Vote PAC, which was created for the initiative. Gibbs said, at least fora decade, he has heard people discussing photo ID requirements for voting and he officially took action in 2021.
“A lot of the sentiment I was getting from people was like, ‘What do you mean, we don’t need an ID? It’s common sense,’ ” Gibbs said. “Well, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Shelbie Swartz, executive director of Battle Born Progress and treasurer of Nevada Voter Freedom Alliance, advocated against the initiative. The outcome wasn’t surprising, though, she said.
“This is a natural culmination of, I would say, bad actors attempting to suppress the votes of working-class people, of people of color and of people that they would rather not see turn out at the polling places.” Swartz said.
The case against the proposal is that requiring an ID to vote would create more barriers to accessibility and discourage voters. You already need to show identification when registering to vote; signatures are verified when casting a ballot.
The opposition cited Nevada’s 28 federally recognized tribal communities who don’t have one uniform ID and rural areas where the nearest DMV may be distant as examples of people who could face harm.
If enacted, the requirement would accept tribal identification cards, as well as IDs for college students and military members, Gibbs said. Those opposed to Question 7 still worry about the possible ramifications, like if a tribal ID isn’t recognized because the forms of identification each sovereign tribe carries vary.
“Voter ID isn’t just a burden,” said Mathilda Miller, government relations director at Native Voters Alliance Nevada. “It’s also a deliberate tactic to suppress communities with a long-standing history of being excluded and silenced.”
Athar Haseebullah, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada, called the proposition a “solution in search of a problem.”
“You’re actually more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to see a case of voter impersonation,” Haseebullah said. “So this is actually not going to be an effective tool for anyone to do anything. All it does is make it such that people who have the most difficult path of getting an ID won’t have an easy ability to be able to vote.”
Gibbs said he agrees Nevada elections aren’t compromised, but he believes the state’s battleground nature makes it crucial for voter errors to be prevented.
“It doesn’t take widespread fraud to impact an election,” Gibbs said. “You’ve seen how close these elections are.”
Furthering his push for the ballot question, Gibbs sat at a booth campaigning for the initiative at the Viva Taco Festival in North Las Vegas last week. His booth, which was shared with opposition to the open primary and ranked-choice initiative Question 3, was sandwiched between the respective Democratic and Republican tables.
He said he would speak with people who said they would support a requirement for voter identification and then watched them walk off to grab signs from a nearby booth for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
“We had quite a few Harris supporters come up and tell us they were going to vote yes on 7 and no on 3. And so that was kind of neat,” Gibbs said. “That felt good, because these weren’t partisan issues, per se. We did not book this as a partisan issue.”
Haseebullah said there wasn’t an official opposition campaign to Question 7 because of time constraints and funding needs, but there will be one in preparation for when it appears on the 2026 ballot.
“It really wasn’t a campaign. I mean, our organizations opposed it, but there was no communication at scale with voters about what this looked like,” Haseebullah said.
He said there will be a lot more resources devoted to opposing the proposal ahead of the next election.
Swartz anticipates that explaining the case against Question 7 with a longer window to reach people can shift voter sympathies. The initiative made the ballot in July, not giving those against it enough time to formulate messaging to voters.
“We’re ready to protect the votes of Nevadans from every corner of the state,” Swartz said. “Two years is a long time, and we have a lot of work to do.”
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