Concerns linger as some volunteers say they haven’t received hands-on training with the iPads the party purchased to help tabulate results. Other volunteers are worried about executing the caucus’ new voting alignment system, which includes the extra complication of adding early-vote totals to day-of results — a step that even Iowa, with all its problems, didn’t have to deal with.
Multiple presidential campaigns are anxious that the state party won’t finish tabulating the enormous number of early votes by Saturday — and they want more transparency on how those votes will be divvied up to individual precincts.
Finally, there are signs the state party is worried about unflattering internal details about the caucus being divulged. On Thursday night, the Nevada Democratic Party sent an email to volunteer precinct chairs in rural areas asking them to sign a non-disclosure agreement and simultaneously offering a stipend.
The email to rural site volunteers offered a $50 stipend to precinct chairs and $90 to those who serve as a “site lead and temporary precinct chair.” The NDA stipulates that volunteers are „not authorized to speak to the press unless given permission by the Executive Director or Communications Director.“
One volunteer called it a strange request, interpreting the email as a cash offer in exchange for signing the NDA.
But Forgey, the party spokeswoman, said the stipend is not contingent on signing the NDA. She said „it is standard for the party to request staff and volunteers who have access to sensitive information to sign one.“ Other volunteers working at sites around Las Vegas have not been asked to sign an NDA.
The Nevada Democratic Party is well aware of the national scrutiny of its caucus, and officials are working hard to avoid a repeat of Iowa. That fiasco undermined confidence in the entire process, obscuring the real-time picture of how candidates performed and inviting mockery from Republicans.
Nevada Democrats say they’ve held 50 training sessions with more than 1,400 volunteers in the past week, and are continuing to do “rigorous trainings” until caucusing begins.
“What we’ve been saying is that our No. 1 priority is getting this right,” Forgey said, and ensuring that „when results come out, that they’re accurate.” She added, however, that the party expects results on Saturday.
Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, is unsettled by the party’s preparations ahead of the caucus.
“They’ve released the number of voters in the early vote, [but] they have not released all
the data on the early voters, something they said they would do,” said Weaver. “So that begs the questions about whether they’re able to process all these — there’s been a huge early vote total. Are they able to process that in time for the caucus?”
The early votes have to be tabulated and reallocated to the correct precinct sites. They will be entered into Google forms pre-installed on iPads being used at each precinct. “I’m concerned about the efficient execution of this rather complicated system they have set up,” Weaver said.
A state party official said ballots are being processed and full early-voting information will be provided to campaigns as soon as it’s available. “We are on track to hold a successful caucus on Saturday,” the official said.
But an official with Joe Biden’s campaign voiced frustration with the state party over the number of ballots that were voided during the first two days of early voting. According to data provided to the campaign by the state party, about 776 ballots from early voting ballots on Saturday and Sunday — or 3 percent of the total — were scrapped because a voter failed to sign the ballot. (The state party provided more updated figures: Of the more than 36,000 ballots that were cast through Monday, 1,124 ballots have been voided, still about 3 percent.)
„If that percentage holds across all early voting days, more than 2,100 voters will have been disenfranchised because of lack of signature,” Biden’s general counsel wrote in a letter to the state party Thursday. “This is not a fair or defensible outcome … We ask that the state party ensure that these votes are counted.”
In an emailed response to the Biden campaign, Alana Mounce, executive director of the Nevada State Democratic Party, said the party gave campaigns guidance “some time ago regarding the processing of early vote ballots,” including details that ballots without a voter signature would be voided. The party said signatures are an “important security component.”
“Since that time, our early vote volunteers and campaigns were given repeated instructions to inform early voters to sign their ballots,” Mounce wrote. “As a result, we saw a steadily-diminished number of ballots being processed that lacked signatures.”
In a second letter, Biden’s general counsel argued that the guidance mentioned by the state party was released “the day before early voting started, with no time for objection and minimal time for training. The campaigns were first briefed on it the day after early voting started, after more than 20,000 ballots had been cast.”
The state party is notifying people whose early-voting ballots have been voided and urging them to attend a caucus on Saturday, the Nevada Independent reported. The party is standing by its decision to void ballots without valid signatures.
The meltdown in Iowa last month has Nevada party leaders and volunteers on edge because the process in the two states is so similar. Like in Iowa, three different counts — an initial raw vote total; a second raw vote total after it’s determined which candidates clear a 15 percent viability threshold; and a delegate total — must be calculated and reported. The complications of the system seem likely to add to confusion.
Nevada Democrats are already warning that the initial results expected to be reported on Saturday will reflect whatever precincts chairs report to them, even if they contain obvious arithmetic mistakes that can be fixed at a later date. “If there are any math questions or other issues on caucus reporting sheets, they will be addressed subsequent to caucus day according to our established results review procedures,” Alana Mounce, the executive director of the state party said in a memorandum on Friday.
Four years ago, Hillary Clinton’s narrow victory over Sanders was projected within just a few hours of the caucuses commencing. But, back then, the state party and its network of volunteers spread across the state only had one result to report, from a race with just two candidates.
Bruce Huyghue, 83, who will be a caucus precinct chair in the greater Las Vegas area, said he planned to be trained on the iPads and Google Forms before Saturday. But new technology aside, Hughue expects the Saturday caucus to be more work and messier than in 2016.
“It’s chaotic with two. It could be a zoo with five or six” candidates, Huyghue said Thursday night after a caucus training.
Steven Shepard and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.
Source: politico.com
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