Question 3, that would have opened primaries and introduced rank-choice voting, was defeated in its second attempt on the ballot.
Question 3 passed in 2022, but failed on Tuesday. This would have amended the state constitution, which is why it needs to have passed twice.
Sondra Cosgrove, the executive director of Vote Nevada and a history professor at the College of Southern Nevada, supports the question and explains why she thinks it did not pass.
“It's related to ranked choice voting, and it's not because it's confusing, it's because it goes against the grain of politics that we normally are used to. So, it goes against the grain of politics as usual. It's very aggressive, confrontational, argumentative, and combative,” she said.
Cosgrove said ranked choice voting was the reason it failed, not because it was confusing, but because it’s a different way of doing politics.
She’s not surprised it didn’t pass this time around.
The first time it was on the ballot, there weren’t all these people saying how bad it would be, she said.
“This time we had all those consultants that yelled at us and screamed at us and sent us mailers and said people were too dumb and they couldn’t understand rank choice voting. And there were enough people who just felt like I don’t want to move away from a process that I’m at least comfortable with but they just decide to vote no.”
She plans to bring it back next legislative session by splitting question three into two different ballot questions to appeal to Democratic leadership, she said.
