Voter turnout and election consolidation

Odds are you didn't vote in Tuesday's municipal primary election. If you live in unincorporated Clark County, don't feel bad -- you weren't supposed to cast a ballot. But if you live in Las Vegas, Henderson or North Las Vegas, you probably passed on the chance to decide who'll make policy decisions on your city council.

Turnout was pathetic. In Henderson, only 11 percent of registered voters went to the polls. Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, with turnout of 15 percent, weren't much better.

Clark County's cities (including the more civic-minded towns of Mesquite and Boulder City) pay about $1.5 million combined to stage their primary and general elections in the spring of every odd-numbered year. But cycle after cycle, Las Vegas Valley voters show little to no interest in municipal politics. Casting a ballot for one or two races hardly seems worth the trouble. In a statewide election, they might vote for 30 or 40 candidates and a dozen ballot questions.

Voters in Henderson won't be troubled again until next year. Their candidates won office outright last week by capturing more than half the vote in their respective primary races, eliminating the need for a runoff in the June 5 general election. In North Las Vegas, one City Council seat remains to be decided. Only Ward 2 voters will go to the polls.

However, every single Las Vegas voter will be asked to return to the voting booth in two months to settle a single Municipal Court judgeship. Residents of Ward 5 will have a little more incentive to vote, with the lone remaining City Council race on their ballots.

Election workers will dutifully mail a few hundred thousand new sample ballots and haul voting machines all over the valley in the heat of May for early voting. They they'll set up polling stations on June 5 for what -- perhaps 20,000 votes?

Few things in this country are as sacrosanct as votes of the people, but local government resources are clearly being wasted in city elections.

Fortunately, this problem has an easy fix, one that will send municipal turnout skyrocketing and save taxpayers money: It's time for Clark County's cities to combine their elections with statewide ballots.

Because municipal and county governments operate under the authority of the state Legislature, such a change would require lawmakers' approval. Senate Bill 149, under consideration in Carson City, would move all Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, Boulder City and Mesquite elections to even-numbered years by 2014.

In Washoe County, Reno and Sparks have been running their elections this way for years with no ill consequences.

No doubt, some Southern Nevada politicians will quietly fight this common-sense reform. Municipal officials like having an election cycle all to themselves. They prefer being at the top of a small ballot to being at the bottom of a big one. They don't want to compete with hundreds of other candidates for campaign advertising airtime and space for roadside signage. And they don't want to have to raise money when candidates for Congress, statewide and Clark County offices are already shaking down the same donors.

They might even argue that voters simply have too many choices before them in statewide elections to cast an informed vote in municipal races.

That's folly. Citizens who take the trouble to fulfill their civic duty won't cease their election research over a couple of more contests.

And they certainly won't mind educating themselves about municipal races if it means they'll go more than a year without receiving campaign phone calls and mailers or seeing giant signs clutter the valley's main thoroughfares.

Municipal offices serve important functions. They shouldn't be chosen by a tiny fraction of the population when they serve everyone in their jurisdictions. And municipalities should be seeking out even the smallest ways to reduce their constituents' ever-growing tax burdens.

For the good of our citizens and local governments, the Legislature should pass Senate Bill 149.