LETTER: Nevada primary balloting was a fiasco

Steve Sebelius’s Sunday commentary on why voters chose to stand in line on primary Election Day instead of mailing in ballots left out one salient fact: If people are able to figure out how to stand in line six-feet apart in a grocery checkout line while wearing face masks, then election officials could easily have accommodated voters who wanted to cast their votes in person by adding polling places and treating people like the responsible adults they are.

Instead, ballots were sent out en masse — rosters apparently unpurged — to everyone on the registered voter rolls. Those included folks who had moved or were deceased and most likely illegally registered voters. Many voters never received a ballot. Others received several ballots at their address for people who no longer lived there.

The paper ballots themselves had the names and signatures on the return envelopes, a great way to steal people’s signatures and addresses. The ballots themselves had no place to sign your name to identify your ballot. And you wonder why people were suspicious about who would be handling them — let alone whether they’d reach the intended destination. Would that vote be counted or simply tossed into a dumpster?

Granted, voters were given a choice of mailing in a ballot or standing in line to vote. But in this time of deeply divided party lines, no one trusts anyone. And this is why we have the secret ballot. Mailed-in ballots are, by their nature, not secret because of the number of people who handle them.

Many more polling places should have been opened that could have been monitored for “social distancing.” This was a fiasco, and we should return to normal methods in November.