NEVADA VIEWS: Open primaries an affront to political freedom

For the past week, Nevadans across the state have cast early votes in the primary elections. Although all voters can participate in non-partisan primaries, including races for the Board of Regents, judges or local governments, partisan primaries remain closed to voters without a party affiliation.

This structure has become the core of a growing political debate in the Silver State.

Currently, more than 37 percent of the registered voters in Nevada are non-partisans. This share is more than any other political party in the state, making it an essential audience for both Republicans and Democrats. Unsurprisingly, these statistics have fueled calls for open primaries, with supporters arguing that partisan primaries exclude too many voters from participation.

But beneath slogans calling for access lies a far more important debate determining the democratic process: Who gets to determine a political party’s nominee?

Voters in Nevada have weighed in on this issue before. Question 3 on the 2022 election ballot proposed establishing open top five primaries with ranked-choice voting. Under this design, candidates for state executive, state legislative and congressional elections would run in the same primary regardless of their party affiliation. The top five candidates to receive the most votes would advance to the general election, where voters would rank them by preference. In practice, this open primary design would mean that candidates from one political party could sweep the primary and shut out opposing political parties from even appearing on the general election ballot.

In 2022, 52.94 percent of the voters voted in favor of the ballot measure, advancing it to the 2024 general election. In 2024, however, it was defeated, as only 47 percent of the voters supported it. Although the proposal intertwined open primaries with ranked-choice voting, there is no confusion about the fact that Nevadans opposed both ideas.

Regardless, only days before the 2025 legislative session was to conclude, Assembly Majority Leader Steve Yeager introduced Assembly Bill 597, aiming to establish open primaries. The proposal would have allowed non-partisan voters to request a partisan ballot for one major political party’s primary election. AB 597 was introduced as an emergency measure, although state voters rejected this idea only six months prior. Through last-minute hearings and amendments, the bill passed both chambers on party-line votes before being vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, who considered overriding the “clear and recent decision” of Nevada voters inappropriate.

Despite the continued political debates, this topic is not as controversial as it seems.

Political parties exist for a reason. They are private organizations ran independently of state or federal governments and built around shared ideology, values and goals. Primary elections are for party members to elect the candidates best able to represent them at the general election. Opening primary elections to non-members fundamentally defeats their purpose.

Currently, primary elections are funded by taxpayers. This allows the state to have a justification for interfering in the party processes. A better approach would be rethinking funding mechanisms: Let political parties fund their own primaries. By shifting the financial costs and responsibilities to the parties, the state would reinforce their standing as private organizations with complete control over nomination processes and election technicalities without government interference.

Open primaries may be branded as a silver bullet to address political disengagement or polarization in a state with a growing independent voter base, but they infringe upon the right of political parties to choose their representation.

The 2026 primary election will conclude on Tuesday, but the attempts to establish open primaries in the Silver State will not. Nevada voters already expressed their opinion on the policy, so lawmakers should recognize that outcome for what it was: a reminder that political freedom includes the right of private organizations to govern themselves.

Anahit Baghshetsyan is a policy analyst at Nevada Policy, a free-market think tank in Las Vegas.