Just over three-quarters of Nevada’s registered voters voted in the last two presidential elections — 77% in 2016 and 78% in 2020.

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

Just over half — 50.4% — of Nevada’s eligible voters had cast their ballots by the end of the day Friday, the last day of early in-person voting.

Cumulative mail-in turnout and early in-person turnout during this year’s early voting period were slightly less common than four years ago, when 56% of voters had cast ballots toward the end of early voting, according to Nevada Secretary of State turnout reports.

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

Another 26.8% of votes were cast by others, including nonpartisan parties — a group that would be the state’s largest political party if they were a party — along with the much smaller number of Nevadans who belong to third parties .

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

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

The Secretary of State’s Office will continue to release mail-in vote totals every day until Election Day.

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

So far, so good

“The process went smoothly,” Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar said at a news conference Friday, and his office is “I expect the same through Election Day.”

He said there have been no cases where the use of a new law has been necessary adopted during the 2023 legislature to protect election workers from intimidation and election interference.

Mail-in ballots are already being counted and county election officials may begin counting votes in person early on the morning of Election Day.

That means that when the polls close on Tuesday, all early and mail ballots received before Election Day may have been counted, and the first release of results could include a significantly larger pool of votes than has been the case in the past.

In 2020, the presidential race in Nevada was not called by media decision agencies until the Saturday after Election Day due to the narrow margins between Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the significant number of ballots that had not yet been counted by the end of Election Day. .

The new procedures have made officials optimistic that Nevada’s results won’t take as long this year. One of those officials is Lorena Portillo, the registrar of voters in Clark County, home to 72% of Nevada’s registered voters.

During the press briefing Friday, Aguilar and his staff noted that voting machines are not connected to the internet, so ballots must be physically taken to the county election office. This was emphasized 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 provincial capitals.

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 underlined by the number of postal votes received on election day itself, but not until later is counted during the primaries.

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

Aguilar also joked that his goal is for Nevada’s elections to go so smoothly that no one outside Nevada knows who he is.